ightly
lighted windows. At the base of this populous structure was an eternal
jangle of horsecars, and all round it, in the upper dusk, was a sinister
hum of mosquitoes. The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge
transparent cage, flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street,
of which it formed a sort of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting
the passersby promiscuously. The young Englishmen went in with everyone
else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of hundred men sitting on divans
along a great marble-paved corridor, with their legs stretched out,
together with several dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket
office of a railway station, before a brilliantly illuminated counter
of vast extent. These latter persons, who carried portmanteaus in their
hands, had a dejected, exhausted look; their garments were not very
fresh, and they seemed to be rendering some mysterious tribute to a
magnificent young man with a waxed mustache, and a shirtfront adorned
with diamond buttons, who every now and then dropped an absent glance
over their multitudinous patience. They were American citizens doing
homage to a hotel clerk.

"I'm glad he didn't tell us to go there," said one of our Englishmen,
alluding to their friend on the steamer, who had told them so many
things. They walked up the Fifth Avenue, where, for instance, he had
told them that all the first families lived. But the first families were
out of town, and our young travelers had only the satisfaction of seeing
some of the second--or perhaps even the third--taking the evening air
upon balconies and high flights of doorsteps, in the streets which
radiate from the more ornamental thoroughfare. They went a little way
down one of these side streets, and they saw young ladies in white
dresses--charming-looking persons--seated in graceful attitudes on the
chocolate-colored steps. In one or two places these young ladies were
conversing across the street with other young ladies seated in similar
postures and costumes in front of the opposite houses, and in the warm
night air their colloquial tones sounded strange in the ears of
the young Englishmen. One of our friends, nevertheless--the younger
one--intimated that he felt a disposition to interrupt a few of these
soft familiarities; but his companion observed, pertinently enough, that
he had better be careful. "We must not begin with making mistakes," said
his companion.

"But he told us, you know--he told