more or
less elevated circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up
to enter your name on his dog's-eared register. I have less hesitation
in unburdening myself of this uncomfortable statement, as on this
particular trip I met with more than one exception to the rule.
Officials become brutalized, I suppose, as a matter of course. One
cannot expect an office-clerk to embrace tenderly every stranger who
comes in with a carpet-bag, or a telegraph-operator to burst into tears
over every unpleasant message he receives for transmission. Still,
humanity is not always totally extinguished in these persons. I
discovered a youth in the telegraph-office of the Continental Hotel, in
Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, and as graciously
responsive to inoffensive questions, as if I had been his childless
opulent uncle, and my will not made.

On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with
sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of
the car may be made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a
traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust
looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are
common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by,
feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. I had a mighty
passion come over me to be the captain of one,--to glide back and
forward upon a sea never roughened by storms,--to float where I could
not sink,--to navigate where there is no shipwreck,--to lie languidly
on the deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a
finger: there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy, but
who has not often envied a cobbler in his stall?

The boys cry the "N'-York _Heddle_," instead of "Herald"; I remember
that years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end
of the dumb-bell suburb. A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the
waters, so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy
is not distinguished; _nez camus_, as a Frenchman would say; no
illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town
looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that
trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves,
elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like
the walls of a hock-glass.

I went straight to the house in Walnut Stree