One hears a good deal of the greater quiet of London after New York. I
think that what you notice is a difference in the quality of the noise
in London. What is with us mainly a harsh, metallic shriek, a grind of
trolley wheels upon trolley tracks, and a wild battering of their
polygonized circles upon the rails, is in London the dull, tormented
roar of the omnibuses and the incessant cloop-cloop of the cab-horses'
hoofs. Between the two sorts of noise there is little choice for one who
abhors both. The real difference is that in many neighborhoods you can
more or less get away from the specialized noises in London, but you
never can do this in New York. You hear people saying that in these
refuges the London noise is mellowed to a soft pour of sound, like the
steady fall of a cataract, which effectively is silence; but that is not
accurate. The noise is broken and crushed in a huge rumble without a
specialized sound, except when, after midnight, the headlong clatter of
a cab-horse distinguishes itself from the prevailing bulk. But the New
York noise is never broken and crushed into a rumble; it bristles with
specific accents, night and day, which agonizingly assort themselves one
from another, and there is no nook or corner where you can be safe from
them, as you can measurably be in London.

London is, if anything, rather more infested than New York with motors,
as the English more simply and briefly call automobiles. The perspective
is seldom free of them, and from time to time the air is tainted with
their breath, which is now one of the most characteristic stenches of
civilization. They share equally with other vehicles the drives in the
parks, though their speed is tempered there to the prevalent pace. They
add to the general noise the shuddering bursts of their swift
percussions, and make the soul shrink from a forecast of what the
aeroplane may be when it shall come hurtling overhead with some peculiar
screech as yet unimagined. The motor plays an even more prominent part