Beauty." We laughed so!

New York Harbour is a wonderful sight, but you have read all about it
often. The streets by it are awful, badly paved and hideous architecture,
immense tall houses here and there, gaunt and staring like giants who have
seen Medusa's head and been turned into stone. Farther up town the
buildings are all much the same, so their huge height does not show so
greatly as with a few lower ones in between.

Every creature in the street has got a purposeful determined air, and even
the horses, many of them without blinkers, have it, too, I wonder if we
shall catch it before we leave. Nobody appears English--I mean of origin,
even if their name is Smith or Brown; every other nation, with the strong
stamp of "American" dominating whatever country they originally hailed
from, but not English. They have all the appearance of rushing to some
special place, not just taking a walk to nowhere.

You would have to come here to understand the insolence of the servants in
most places. We naturally ordered tea (down the telephone) when we arrived,
and presently a waiter brought a teapot and two cups and nothing else; and
when we remonstrated he picked his teeth and grinned and said, "If you
don't ask for what you want you won't get it. You said tea, and you've got
tea, you never mentioned sugar and milk." Then he bounced off, and when the
lift boy whistled as he brought me up, and the Irish chambermaid began to
chat to Octavia, she said she could not bear it any longer, and Tom must go
out and find another hotel. So late last night we got here, which is
charming; perhaps the attendants are paid extra for manners. But even here
they call Octavia "Lady Chevenix" and me "Lady Valmond" every minute--never
just "My Lady" like at home, and I am sure they would rather die than say
"Your Ladyship!"