miles of desert sand and alkali plain, and in the mighty mass of metal
with its glare of cyclopean eye and its banner of fire-illumined
smoke, that bears the conquerors of stubborn nature from side to side
of the great continent? Is there not an element of the picturesque in
the struggles of the Western farmer? Can anything be finer in its way
than a night view of Pittsburg--that "Hell with its lid off," where
the cold gleam of electricity vies with the lurid glare of the
furnaces and smelting works? I say nothing of the Californian
Missions; of the sallow creoles of New Orleans with their gorgeous
processions of Mardi-Gras; or of the almost equally fantastic fête of
the Veiled Prophet of St. Louis; or of the lumberers of Michigan; or
of the Mexicans of Arizona; or of the German beer-gardens of Chicago;
or of the swinging lanterns and banners of Chinatown in San Francisco
and Mott street in New York; or of the Italians of Mulberry Bend in
the latter city; or of the alternating stretches on a long railway
journey of forest and prairie, yellow corn-fields and sandy desert; or
of many other classes and conditions which are by no means void of
material for the artist in pen or brush. All these lend hues that are
anything but prosaic to my kaleidoscopic recollections of the United
States; but more than all these, _the_ characteristically picturesque
feature of American life, stands out the omnipresent negro. It was a
thrill to have one's boots blackened by a coloured "professor" in an
alley-way of Boston, and to hear his richly intoned "as shoh's you're
bawn." It was a delight to see the negro couples in the Public Garden,
conducting themselves and their courting, as Mr. Howells has well
remarked, with infinitely more restraint and refinement than their
Milesian compeers, or to see them passing out of the Charles-street
Church in all the Sunday bravery of broadcloth coats, shiny hats,
wonderfully laundered skirts of snowy whiteness, and bodices of all
the hues of the rainbow. And all through the Union their glossy black