o Londoners,
two New Yorkers, two Bostonians, requires no foot-notes, which is a
great advantage in their intercourse.

To return from my digression and my illustration. I did not do a great
deal of shopping myself while in London, being contented to have it done
for me. But in the way of looking in at shop windows I did a very large
business. Certain windows attracted me by a variety in unity which
surpassed anything I have been accustomed to. Thus one window showed
every conceivable convenience that could be shaped in ivory, and nothing
else. One shop had such a display of magnificent dressing-cases that I
should have thought a whole royal family was setting out on its travels.
I see the cost of one of them is two hundred and seventy guineas.
Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars seems a good deal to pay for a
dressing-case.

On the other hand, some of the first-class tradesmen and workmen make no
show whatever. The tailor to whom I had credentials, and who proved
highly satisfactory to me, as he had proved to some of my countrymen and
to Englishmen of high estate, had only one small sign, which was placed
in one of his windows, and received his customers in a small room that
would have made a closet for one of our stylish merchant tailors. The
bootmaker to whom I went on good recommendation had hardly anything
about his premises to remind one of his calling. He came into his
studio, took my measure very carefully, and made me a pair of what we
call Congress boots, which fitted well when once on my feet, but which
it cost more trouble to get into and to get out of than I could express
my feelings about without dangerously enlarging my limited vocabulary.

Bond Street, Old and New, offered the most inviting windows, and I
indulged almost to profligacy in the prolonged inspection of their
contents. Stretching my walk along New Bond Street till I came to a
great intersecting thoroughfare, I found myself in Oxford Street. Here
the character of the shop windows changed at once. Utility and
convenience took the place of show and splendor. Here I found various
articles of use in a household, some of which were new to me. It is very
likely that I could have found most of them in our own Boston Cornhill,
but one often overlooks things at home which at once arrest his
attention when he sees them in a strange place. I saw great numbers of
illuminating contrivances, some of which pleased me by their arrangement
of reflectors.