from visitors, I was loth to believe, though nothing could have been
plainer, if one had happened to think of it from the start.

Is it not funny, the way they serve their Congress Water at the Cataract
House? They put a big lump of ice in a tumbler, take a bottle from a
shelf, pour the warm, stale fluid, (tasting like _perspiration_, as one
might fancy,) into this glass, and expect you to wait till it has grown
cool enough to be palatable. Well, if you wait, you lose what little
life there is left in the stuff; and if you don't, you'll be sorry you
hadn't done so.

One may say, "You needn't have ordered any Congress Water." Very well,
but why not, provided I liked it? The clerk said they kept Vichy, also,
but I learned they were "out." I wish they had been out of Congress too.
"All right!" said I, "I shall enjoy my breakfast all the more, for I
know _that_ will make amends!" And it did. The "salmon trout" was dry,
as usual, but that breakfast was a good thing. I enjoyed it, and my two
niggers and my New York paper of day before, (for which I paid a cute
looking boy in the hall ten cents, on my way to breakfast,) and was
happy.

Not, my dear P., till I reached the "other side," and had been inveigled
into the Museum Hotel, and persuaded into those vile wrappings of
oil-cloth, with the ponderous rubbers over my thick boots, and had stood
around for some time, awaiting the pleasure of the very leisurely guide,
sweating at every pore, (or _nearly_ every one, for there are several
millions, I believe, and I so hate exaggeration,) and trying to evade
the glances of the amused bystanders, did I begin to realize the
enormity of the imposition that had been practised on me. Just fancy
_yourself_, Mr PUNCHINELLO, in such a costume, taking a seemingly