compatriot was indeed much more bent upon getting a pair of
cotton socks, like those his own continent wears almost
universally in summer, but a series of exhaustive visits to all
the leading haberdashers in Manchester developed the strange fact
that there, in the world-heart of the cotton-spinning industry,
there was no such thing to be found. In Manchester there are only
woollen socks, heavier or lighter, to be bought, and the shopmen
smile pityingly if you say, in your strange madness, that woollen
socks are not for summer wear. Possibly, however, it was not
summer in Manchester, and we were misled by the almanac. Possibly
we had been spoiled by three weeks of warm, sunny rain on the
Welsh coast, and imagined a vain thing in supposing that the end
of August was not the beginning of November.


II

I thought Manchester, however, as it shows itself in its public
edifices, a most dignified town, with as great beauty as could be
expected of a place which has always had so much to do besides
looking after its figure and complexion. The very charming series
or system of parks, public gardens, and playgrounds, unusual in
their number and variety, had a sympathetic allure in the gray,
cool light, even to the spectator passing in a hurried hansom.
They have not the unity of the Boston or Chicago parkways, and I
will own that I had not come to Manchester for them. What
interested me more were the miles and miles of comfortable-
looking little brick houses in which, for all I knew, the mill-
labor dwelt. Very possibly it did not; the mills themselves are
now nearly all, or mostly, outside of Manchester, and perhaps for