New York, September 20, 1867. THE British tourist has been
plentiful in this latitude during the past month. Indeed, along the margin of the August page of almanacks in usum Yankium might safely be printed, "Expect many Britiehers about this time." I suppose that the adjourn- ment of Parliament has something to do with the choice of the time for these periodical and increasing visitations, although no "American," unless he were of the class politician, or the other yet lower class, lobby agent, would be more considerate of a session of Congress iu deciding such a question than of a meeting of the nearest debating society. With you, political and social life seem to be strongly knit together ; with us, the degree of their. severance can hardly be overestimated.
It is unfortunate for our British friends, and unfortunate for us, that they should choose this time of year for their visits. It is just the time at which they should not come, that is, if they wish to see to advantage what only in this country is worth seeing— the scenery and the people. There is hardly a public building in the land, the sight of which will repay ten minutes' walk ; and of those that are an offence to the eyes there is enough, if they were properly ruined, to rebuild Babylon. Historical associations, which dignify much architectural ugliness in Europe, are here almost altogether lacking. There were houses, public and private, which, if they still existed, we, or'some of us, should look upon with veneration'; but they were built of such perishable stuff, and they stood so much in the way of the commercial and social prosperity which sprang from events which took place within their malls, that hardly a generation had disappeared after the occurrence of those events before these nests of liberty were borne off in ruins upon the current. As to works of art, libraries, insti- tutions of learning, parks, and beautiful private residences, surely no one can come here to look for them, any more than he would go rinto the wilderness 'tot find a man clothed in soft raiment. Of our institutions, concrete, only -some common schools and a few factories are worthy of attention, as peculair in form and in their mode of working. There remain, therefore, but Nature, our institutions in the abstract, and our people; and the last two, interdependent, the former evolved from the latter, and each informed by the other, are, to the thoughtful observer, one. Now, as to Nature, she is here in August and September in one of her least attractive garbs. Our autumn is sumptuous; but autumn here does not begin until October. We have in August, and even in September, our fiercest heat, and as I write now, sitting perforce with windows open, and without a coat, I am, as Miss Carolina Wilhomina Skeggs on a similar occa- sion eloquently remarked, "all in a muck of sweat." To travel here in August and September by rail is to swelter in hug; hot wooden caverns over dusty roads, sitting in air filled with warm powder so fine that it penetrates your very pores. These, too, are the months when the mosquito reigns, that dreadful insect which comes in swarms of untold numbers, filling the air with the sound of its tiny trumpet, and madden- ing you by biting not only your face and neck, but by select- ing, for their tenderness,, the hollow of your foot, the creases of your knuckles, and the quick of your nails. They cost you sleepless nights, unless you oppress yourself with netting ; and you see and feel the effects of their bites sometimes for weeks. I wonder that sceptics have never based an argument against the possibility of an omnipotent, omniscient, and purely benevolent Creator upon the co-existence of this minute creature of man. The mosquito is not only bred. in the shrubbery about houses, but is produced in countless myriads in woods and marshes and in vast solitudes, where it has swarmed year after year for ages, and tasted no drop of blood. Yet it is furnished with a proboscis and an elaborate apparatus for sucking blood, and with a poison of marvellous malignity which it injects to thin the blood, that it may be drawn easily through the proboscis. The blood that a million of these minute creatures would draw from a man would be as nothing ; the bite of one is torment, and not only is it torment to him, but death to the insect. And yet the mosquito which would have lived its little life, as its progenitors had lived theirs, not only guiltless but ignorant of blood, the moment a victim appears uses the apparatus so delicately contrived to inflict pain and ensure self- destruction, and bites and dies. I confess that the formation of this multitudinous little insect with the capacity of giving pain, which is incidental neither to its defence nor its nutrition, is to me one of the most inscrutable facts in nature. Be this as it may, the mosquito is one of the greatest drawbacks to the enjoyment of life here in warm weather, even to us "natives ;" and the British traveller chooses the time when he is most numerous and annoy- ing. This, too, is the time when our flowers are gone, our fields generally parched, and the very foliage of our trees is dim with dust and drought. Our people are generally at this time almost inaccessible to strangers. They flee from the cities ; and as we have not in any great degree that rich country life of the cultivated classes which is so marked and fine a feature of English society, they are most of them at country board- ing houses, at farm houses, or at watering-place hotels, cooped up in either case in very straitened quarters ; living in either a comfortless and exceptional life, and in the latter one of feeding, frivolity, and social excitement without social enjoyment. Entertainment of friends is difficult under such circumstances, except among that very small number of cultivated people who keep up both a city and a country establishment, or who live altogether in the country. In these months society in cities for social purposes does not exist, and all who can do so remain in the country through October, which is the most beautiful and enjoy- able month of our year. Indeed, " society" does not begin in town until December, about the holidays, and it ends with the Tuesday before Lent, at 11 hours and 59 minutes p.m. Within that period we crowd not only all our social gaiety, including our very opera and concert-going, but the little real -unpretentious sociable enjoy- ment left to us by advancing luxury and fashion. That is the time in which to find " Americans " comfortably at home, and ready to entertain strangers ; and unless we are seen at home we are not seen with advantage, either to ourselves or to those who really wish to find out what we are.
The traveller, then, who wishes to see the country, and also the people which has been formed here during the toils and trials of two centuries and a quarter, should so contrive his trip as to arrive here about the middle of September, and to remain four months. He cannot attain his object in a shorter period, and not well at any other. The first six.weeks or two months he can give to the country, and daring that time he can comfortably " do " the Hudson, Niagara, the St. Lawrence, Montreal, Quebec, the White Mountains, Lake Champlain, and• the other principal points in New England and the Middle States, and even Washington, and something of Virginia and Maryland, where are the Natural Bridge and Harper's Ferry. If he would see the great western lakes and prairies, not to say the Rocky Mountains, and shoot a buffalo, of course he must take longer, perhaps. For it is some- what marvellous to us, the rapidity with which the British tra- veller gets through his work, although we have the credit of being rather a fast people. I remember an Englishwoman telling me about her arrival and her journeyings, and then going on to speak of travel in Europe, saying that such and such things could hardly be well seen "at the rate at which you Americans get over the ground." I fear that I must have been guilty of the impo- liteness of looking bard at her when she said this, for she blushed and smiled, and exclaimed with charming frankness, "Well, it's pretty well of me to say that, after telling you all that we've been doing in such a time !" The rest of the four months should be given to society, and it will enable the traveller
to see that of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington (a few good letters of introduction being, of course, presumed), and to spend a quiet week or so in some pleasant New England village, without which no man can really understand what Yankees are, and how they came to be. I remember also telling an English gentleman that it was necessary for him to stop here past October if he wished to see " American " society ; and his reason for not stopping was given in one word—hunting. But if
a man is not willing to give up for one season a few rides after fox and hounds that he may truly know the people whom he has come across the Athuitir to see, far be it from me to trouble him with my advice, not to say my persuasion.
One word more, and upon a matter of some importance. The British traveller who would pass his time here with comfort to
himself and those whom he visits, and who would not shut him- self out from many of the best sources of information, and even subject himself to some hoaxing and perhaps some rebuffs, should, as far as he seeks intercourse with people here, leave behind him all memory of what would be their and his relative social positions at home. If he keeps himself to himself nobody will take the least offence ; but if he asks another man for his acquaintance and his company, it must be on the footing of absolute equality. We are anything but social democrats here, and therefore, having no defined ranks, are very exclusive ; but when we do meet we meet as equals, and we exact the same of the stranger within our gates. So if you, being the Duke of Omnium, make a Yankee's acquaint- ance, treat him exactly as if he were Duke of Gatherum, of the same creation is yours, an equal rent-roll, and no less parliamentary influence. Or, better, if you can grasp the idea, treat him just as if you were only one man and he were only another. Listen to every decent person who chooses to talk to you ; speak freely to any person ; talk with the conductors ; you will learn much in this way, Few persons will address you first, but every one to the manner born will be glad to talk with you, and tell you all that he thinks will interest you. And if you are conversing with a friend in a very public place, a hotel porch or the deck of a steamboat, for instance, and an unreserved bystander puts in his oar, don't turn to him and say, as a British acquaintance of mine did, "I was not speaking to you." Don't, on your first call upon a man, because you dislike his library (as I should), it being filled with pirated reprints, tell him that his books are "cheap and nasty," and then be surprised that he does not seem pleased with that sort thing. Mrs. Quickly didn't like to be called a woman in her own house. Don't chaff Yankees who are in inferior positions, and, above all, don't do it in a highly gentlemanly style. That may do with cabmen and barmaids at home ; here it gives offence, and may make you trouble. You can stop to dinner in your morning dress, if you are asked offhand, and in an informal way ; but don't suppose, therefore, that you can go to a dinner party or to meet ladies of an evening in your shooting coat, as a sprig of nobility did in one ease that I know of, and wondered that the ladies treated him with such indifference. Be careful about drawing conclusions as to the culture and social position of men from their occupation. . Your English habits may sadly mislead you upon this point. You will be civil, of course, to every one whose company you seek-; self-interest teaches that ; but you may be betrayed into a lack of con- sideration for a man who represents as many generations of gentle- men as you do, although he does not presume upon it, and who would as soon snub a duke as a dustman. Don't use your new acquaint- ances, and then fling them away. Englishmen frequently, very frequently, as I know and hear from friends, come here, present letters, receive such attention as we can give, pass much time in our houses, and then part from us without the expression of a wish that we shall meet again. A gentleman of wealth and high social position told me the other day that two Englishmen, both gentlemen and one a man of rank, who brought him letters and stopped at his house some days, parted from him without even giving him their address. This is strange and offensive to us. And yet I know it cannot be meant so, in all cases at least ; for the like has happened to me with men who were not only, thorough- bred gentlemen, but thorough good fellows, as so many are smong our British visitors ; and they, are they who will not take offence
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