as regards physical motion—­and their early old age.  The winters are long and cold in America, and mechanical ingenuity is far extended.  These two facts together have created a system of stoves, hot-air pipes, steam chambers, and heating apparatus so extensive that, from autumn till the end of spring, all inhabited rooms are filled with the atmosphere of a hot oven.  An Englishman fancies that he is to be baked, and for awhile finds it almost impossible to exist in the air prepared for him.  How the heat is engendered on board the river steamers I do not know, but it is engendered to so great a degree that the sitting-cabins are unendurable.  The patient is therefore driven out at all hours into the outside balconies of the boat, or on to the top roof—­for it is a roof rather than a deck—­ and there, as he passes through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour, finds himself chilled to the very bones.  That is my first complaint.  But as the boats are made for Americans, and as Americans like hot air, I do not put it forward with any idea that a change ought to be effected.  My second complaint is equally unreasonable, and is quite as incapable of a remedy as the first.  Nine-tenths of the travelers carry children with them.  They are not tourists engaged on pleasure excursions, but men and women intent on the business of life.  They are moving up and down looking for fortune and in search of new homes.  Of course they carry with them all their household goods.  Do not let any critic say that I grudge these young travelers their right to locomotion.  Neither their right to locomotion is grudged by me, nor any of those privileges which are accorded in America to the rising generation.  The habits of their country and the choice of their parents give to them full dominion over all hours and over all places, and it would ill become a foreigner to make such habits and such choice a ground of serious complaint.  But, nevertheless, the uncontrolled energies of twenty children round one’s legs do not convey comfort or happiness, when the passing events are producing noise and storm rather than peace and sunshine.  I must protest that American babies are an unhappy race.  They eat and drink just as they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, and kept in the background as children are kept with us, and yet they are wretched and uncomfortable.  My heart has bled for them as I have heard them squalling by the hour together in agonies of discontent and dyspepsia.  Can it be, I wonder, that children are happier when they are made to obey orders, and are sent to bed at six o’clock, than when allowed to regulate their own conduct; that bread and milk are more favorable to laughter and soft, childish ways than beef-steaks and pickles three times a day; that an occasional whipping, even, will conduce to rosy cheeks?  It is an idea which I should never dare to broach to an American mother; but I must confess that, after my travels on the Western Continent, my