mails, and sent another
for the relief of the passengers.

The custom-house officers were not troublesome, and I was soon at the
Brevoort House, the Parisian Pylades still faithfully following my
fortunes. I was far from entreating him to leave me; landing utterly
alone in a strange land, one does not lightly cast aside companionship.
For reasons easily understood, I had declined to avail myself of many
proffered letters of introduction to New Yorkers.

That lonely feeling did not last long: the first object which caught my
eye on the steps of the Brevoort House was an honest English face--a
face I have known, and liked right well, these dozen years and more.
There stood "the Colonel" (any Ch. Ch. or Rifle Brigade man will
recognize the _sobriquet_), beaming upon the world in general with the
placid cheerfulness that no changes of time or place or fortune seem
able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as
he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my
old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had
never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my
turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse
forgetfulness, when they did befall.

So I had aid and abetment in performing the little lionization which is
obligatory on a visitor to New York; for the "Colonel's" comrade, my
fellow-voyager of the Asia, came to the same hotel.

Assisted by the Parisian, we made trial of the esculents peculiar to the
country--gombo soup, sweet potatoes, terrapins, and canvas-backs--with
much solemnity and satisfaction, agreeing, that fame had spoken truth
for once, in extolling the two last-named delicacies. We went to the
Opera, and there, in a brilliant _salle_ of white and gold, spoilt,
however, by the incongruity of bonnets mingling everywhere with full
evening toilettes, assisted at a massacre--unmusical and melancholy--of
"Lucrezia." We drove out through the crude, unfinished Central Park to
Harlem lane, whither the trotters are wont to resort, and saw several
teams looking very much like work (though no celebrities), almost all of
the lean, rather ragged form which characterizes, more or less, all
American-bred "fast horses." The ground was too hard frozen to allow of
anything beyond gentle exercise; but even at quarter-speed, that
wonderful hind-action was very remarkable. Watching those clean, sinewy
pasterns shoot forwa