Ah, indeed, to be sure you are.  You are the gastronomic metropolis of the Union.  Why don’t you put a canvas-back duck on the top of the Washington column?  Why don’t you get that lady off from Battle Monument and plant a terrapin in her place?  Why will you ask for other glories when you have soft crabs?  No, Sir,—­you live too well to think as hard as we do in Boston.  Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann; rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but you—­if you open your mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.

And what of Philadelphia?—­said the Marylander.

Oh, Philadelphia?—­Waterworks,—­killed by the Croton and Cochituate;—­ Ben Franklin,—­borrowed from Boston;—­David Rittenhouse,—­made an orrery;—­Benjamin Rush,—­made a medical system:—­both interesting to antiquarians;—­great Red-river raft of medical students,—­spontaneous generation of professors to match;—­more widely known through the Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;—­for geological section of social strata, go to The Club.—­Good place to live in,—­first-rate market,—­tip-top peaches.—­What do we know about Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each other?

And what do you say to New York?—­asked the Koh-i-noor?

A great city, Sir,—­replied Little Boston,—­a very opulent, splendid city.  A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence for much that is respectable.  A great money-centre.  San Francisco with the mines above-ground,—­and some of ’em under the sidewalks.  I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in all our cities.  It makes ’em all look paltry and petty.  Has many elements of civilization.  May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.—­The order of its development is just this:—­Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture.  Printing, as a mechanical art,—­just as Nicholas Jenson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it.  Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations, in great perfection.  Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,—­great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,—­but look over to Florence and see who lie in Santa Croce, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!

Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of St. Mark, and her Casa d’ Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; and Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book, in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;—­but all that did not make Venice the brain of Italy.