At a former dinner I remember seeing
a gentleman in small-clothes, with a dress-sword; but all formalities of
the kind are passing away. The Mayor's dinners, too, will no doubt be
extinct before many years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry in
a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. The Bishop is nearly
seven feet high.
After writing the foregoing account of a civic banquet, where I ate
turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oyster patties, and I know not what else,
I have been to the News-room and found the Exchange pavement densely
thronged with people of all ages and of all manner of dirt and rags.
They were waiting for soup-tickets, and waiting very patiently too,
without outcry or disturbance, or even sour looks,--only patience and
meekness in their faces. Well, I don't know that they have a right to he
impatient of starvation; but, still there does seem to be an insolence of
riches and prosperity, which one day or another will have a downfall.
And this will be a pity, too.
On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to Otterpool and to Larkhill
to see the skaters on the private waters of those two seats of gentlemen;
and it is a wonder to behold--and it is always a new wonder to me--how
comfortable Englishmen know how to make themselves; locating their
dwellings far within private grounds, with secure gateways and porters'
lodges, and the smoothest roads and trimmest paths, and shaven lawns, and
clumps of trees, and every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made
the most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter
cannot cause disarray; and all this appropriated to the same family for
generations, so that I suppose they come to believe it created
exclusively and on purpose for them.
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