As The General Result Of My Sojourn
In The Country, I Must Declare That I Was Always Happy And
Comfortable In The Eastern Cities, And Generally Unhappy And
Uncomfortable In The West.
I had previously been inclined to think
that I should like the roughness of the West, and that in the East I
should encounter an arrogance which would have kept me always on the
verge of hot water; but in both these surmises I found myself to
have been wrong.
And I think that most English travelers would come
to the same conclusion. The Western people do not mean to be harsh
or uncivil, but they do not make themselves pleasant. In all the
Eastern cities - I speak of the Eastern cities north of Washington - a
society may be found which must be esteemed as agreeable by
Englishmen who like clever, genial men, and who love clever, pretty
women.
I was forced to pass twice again over the road between New York and
Boston, as the packet by which I intended to leave America was fixed
to sail from the former port. I had promised myself, and had
promised others, that I would spend in Boston the last week of my
sojourn in the States, and this was a promise which I was by no
means inclined to break. If there be a gratification in this world
which has no alloy, it is that of going to an assured welcome. The
belief that arms and hearts are open to receive one - and the arms
and hearts of women, too, as far as they allow themselves to open
them - is the salt of the earth, the sole remedy against sea-
sickness, the only cure for the tedium of railways, the one
preservative amid all the miseries and fatigue of travail.
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