which it runs, but it is not by any means the eyesore one might imagine;
and the trains, with their light, graceful, and elegantly-proportioned
cars, so different from our squat and formless railway carriages, seem
to me a positively beautiful feature of the city life. They are not very
noisy, they are not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and almost
noiseless when they are run by electricity. The discomfort they cause,
to dwellers on the avenues is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People
who do not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic imagination
much more than the actual martyrs to the "L" road suffer in fact.
Imagination makes cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies from
the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before I left London; but here I
find nothing that, to healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than
otherwise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic so dense, the
roar and bustle so continuous, as that of London; while the service of
trains and cars is so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs
much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in
Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American
susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of
than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before
courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a
monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that produce it.

One great difference is, I take it, that while New York exhausts it also
stimulates, whereas the days of the year when there is any positive
stimulus in the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers. Muggy
and misty days do occur here, it is true; but though the natives tell me
that this month of March has been exceptionally unpleasant, the
prevailing impression I have received is that of a lofty and radiant
vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that one drank in eagerly,
like sparkling wine. More than once, after a slight snowfall, I have