contrasts. When we visited the Grove of Big Trees near Wawona on May
21, it was in the midst of a driving snow-storm, with the thermometer
standing at 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Next day, as we drove into Raymond,
less than forty miles to the west, the sun was beating down on our
backs, and the thermometer marked 80 degrees in the shade.

There is probably no country in the world where, at times, letters of
introduction are more fully honoured than in the United States. The
recipient does not content himself with inviting you to call or even
to dinner. He invites you to make his house your home; he invites all
his friends to meet you; he leaves his business to show you the lions
of the town or to drive you about the country; he puts you up at his
club; he sends you off provided with letters to ten other men like
himself, only more so. On the other hand, there is probably no country
in the world where a letter of introduction from a man quite entitled
to give it could be wholly ignored as it sometimes is in the United
States. The writer has had experience of both results. No more
fundamental contrast can well be imagined than that between the noisy,
rough, crude, and callous street-life of some Western towns and the
quiet, reticence, delicacy, spirituality, and refinement of many of
the adjacent interiors.

The table manners of the less-educated American classes are hardly of
the best, but where but in America will you find eleven hundred
charity-school boys sit down daily to dinner, each with his own table
napkin, as they do at Girard College, Philadelphia? And where except
at that same institute will you find a man leaving millions for a
charity, with the stipulation that no parson of any creed shall ever
be allowed to enter its precincts?