When I left England in September, 1888, we sailed down the Mersey on one of those absolutely perfect autumn days, the very memory of which is a continual joy.  I remarked on the beauty of the weather to an American fellow-passenger.  He replied, half in fun, “Yes, this is good enough for England; but wait till you see our American weather!” As luck would have it, it was raining heavily when we steamed up New York harbour, and the fog was so dense that we could not see the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, though we passed close under it.  The same American passenger had expatiated to me during the voyage on the merits of the American express service.  “You have no trouble with porters and cabs, as in the Old World; you simply point out your trunks to an express agent, give him your address, take his receipt, and you will probably find your trunks at the house when you arrive.”  We reached New York on a Saturday; I confidently handed over my trunk to a representative of the Transfer Company about 9 A.M., hied to my friend’s house in Brooklyn, and saw and heard nothing more of my trunk till Monday morning!

Such was the way in which two of my most cherished beliefs about America were dissipated almost before I set foot upon her free and sacred soil!  It is, however, only fair to say that if I had assumed these experiences to be really characteristic, I should have made a grievous mistake.  It is true that I afterwards experienced a good many stormy days in the United States, and found that the predominant weather in all parts of the country was, to judge from my apologetic hosts, the “exceptional;” but none the less I revelled in the bright blue, clear, sunny days with which America is so abundantly blessed, and came to sympathise very deeply with the depression that sometimes overtakes the American exile during his sojourn on our fog-bound coasts.  So, too, I found the express system on the whole what our friend Artemus Ward calls “a sweet boon.”  Certainly it is as a rule necessary, in starting from a private house, to have one’s luggage ready an hour or so before one starts one’s self, and this is hardly so convenient as a hansom with you inside and your portmanteau on top; and it is also true that there is sometimes (especially in New York) a certain delay in the delivery of one’s belongings.  In nine cases out of ten, however, it was a great relief to get rid of the trouble of taking your luggage to or from the station, and feel yourself free to meet it at your own time and will.  It was not often that I was reduced to such straits as on one occasion in Brooklyn, when, at the last moment, I had to charter a green-grocer’s van and drive down to the station in it, triumphantly seated on my portmanteau.