from the others, I received nothing but politeness, except in one instance.  That instance, by the way, was a barber in an important hotel, whom I had most respectfully requested to refrain from bumping my head about.  “Why?” he demanded.  “Because I’ve got a headache,” I said.  “Then why didn’t you tell me at first?” he crushed me.  “Did you expect me to be a thought-reader?” But, indeed, I could say a lot about American barbers.  I had expected to have my tempting fob snatched.  It was not snatched.  I had expected to be asked, at the moment of landing, for my mature opinion of the United States, and again at intervals of about a quarter of an hour, day and night, throughout my stay.  But I had been in America at least ten days before the question was put to me, even in jest.  I had expected to be surrounded by boasting and impatient vanity concerning the achievements of the United States and the citizens thereof.  I literally never heard a word of national boasting, nor observed the slightest impatience under criticism....  I say I had expected these things.  I would be more correct to say that I should have expected them if I had had a rumor—­believing mind:  which I have not.

But I really did expect to witness an overwhelming violence of traffic and movement in lower Broadway and the renowned business streets in its vicinity.  And I really was disappointed by the ordinariness of the scene, which could be well matched in half a dozen places in Europe, and beaten in one or two.  If but once I had been shoved into the gutter by a heedless throng going furiously upon its financial ways, I should have been content....  The legendary “American rush” is to me a fable.  Whether it ever existed I know not; but I certainly saw no trace of it, either in New York or Chicago.  I dare say I ought to have gone to Seattle for it.  My first sight of a stock-market roped off in the street was an acute disillusionment.  In agitation it could not have competed with a sheep-market.  In noise it was a muffled silence compared with the fine racket that enlivens the air outside the Paris Bourse.  I saw also an ordinary day in the Stock Exchange.  Faint excitations were afloat in certain corners, but I honestly deemed the affair tame.  A vast litter of paper on the floor, a vast assemblage of hats pitched on the tops of telephone-boxes—­these phenomena do not amount to a hustle.  Earnest students of hustle should visit Paris or Milan.  The fact probably is that the perfecting of mechanical contrivances in the United States has killed hustle as a diversion for the eyes and ears.  The mechanical side of the Exchange was wonderful and delightful.