of good fortune we ever
reached our destination, we knew still less. Our cab was a triumph of
impossibilities, uncertainties, and discomfort. Our attenuated beast,
like an animated hoop skirt, whose bones were only prevented, by the
encasing skin, from flying off as we turned the corners, experienced
hardly less difficulty in drawing his breath than in drawing his load.
We descended at the entrance to the hotel as those who have escaped from
imminent peril. We mounted the steps--two lone, but by no means lorn,
damsels, two anxious, but by no means aimless females, knowing little of
the world, less of travelling, and nothing whatever of foreign ways.
Our very air, as we entered the door, was an apology for the intrusion.

"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared
to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and
strangers who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's
in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our
early advantages, let him examine the record of the Washington Hotel,
Liverpool. The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they
to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character?
Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some
political throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we add to
the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We
hesitated,--and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, past the transparency
of Washington--in the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top boots,
and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous
position--we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid
to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained beds.
The satchels and parcels innumerable were propped carefully into
rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that the ship
would give a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass
windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored to compose our
perturbed minds and gather our scattered wits.

It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping up from the
sea. It has little to interest a stranger aside from its magnificent
docks and warehouses. There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with
feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the
people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of
the