That There Is Something Better Than Either, We Shall
All Agree - But To My Thinking The Crouching And Crawling Is The
Lowest Type Of All.
At that school I saw some five or six hundred girls collected in
one room, and heard them sing.
The singing was very pretty, and it
was all very nice; but I own that I was rather startled, and to
tell the truth somewhat abashed, when I was invited to "say a few
words to them." No idea of such a suggestion had dawned upon me,
and I felt myself quite at a loss. To be called up before five
hundred men is bad enough, but how much worse before that number of
girls! What could I say but that they were all very pretty? As
far as I can remember, I did say that and nothing else. Very
pretty they were, and neatly dressed, and attractive; but among
them all there was not a pair of rosy cheeks. How should there be,
when every room in the building was heated up to the condition of
an oven by those damnable hot-air pipes.
In England a taste for very large shops has come up during the last
twenty years. A firm is not doing a good business, or at any rate
a distinguished business, unless he can assert in his trade card
that he occupies at least half a dozen houses - Nos. 105, 106, 107,
108, 109 and 110. The old way of paying for what you want over the
counter is gone; and when you buy a yard of tape or a new carriage -
for either of which articles you will probably visit the same
establishment - you go through about the same amount of ceremony as
when you sell a thousand pounds out of the stocks in propria
persona. But all this is still further exaggerated in New York.
Mr. Stewart's store there is perhaps the handsomest institution in
the city, and his hall of audience for new carpets is a magnificent
saloon. "You have nothing like that in England," my friend said to
me as he walked me through it in triumph. "I wish we had nothing
approaching to it," I answered. For I confess to a liking for the
old-fashioned private shops. Harper's establishment for the
manufacture and sale of books is also very wonderful. Everything
is done on the premises, down to the very coloring of the paper
which lines the covers, and places the gilding on their backs. The
firm prints, engraves, electroplates, sews, binds, publishes, and
sells wholesale and retail. I have no doubt that the authors have
rooms in the attics where the other slight initiatory step is taken
toward the production of literature.
New York is built upon an island, which is I believe about ten
miles long, counting from the southern point at the Battery up to
Carmansville, to which place the city is presumed to extend
northward. This island is called Manhattan, a name which I have
always thought would have been more graceful for the city than that
of New York.
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