An American finds it a little galling to be told that he must not drive in his numbered hansom or four-wheeler except in certain portions of Hyde Park.  If he is rich enough to keep his own carriage, or if he will pay the extra price of a vehicle not vulgarized by being on the numbered list, he may drive anywhere that his Grace or his Lordship does, and perhaps have a mean sense of satisfaction at finding himself in the charmed circle of exclusive “gigmanity.”  It is a pleasure to meet none but well-dressed and well-mannered people, in well-appointed equipages.  In the high road of our own country, one is liable to fall in with people and conveyances that it is far from a pleasure to meet.  I was once driving in an open carriage, with members of my family, towards my own house in the country town where I was then living.  A cart drawn by oxen was in the road in front of us.  Whenever we tried to pass, the men in it turned obliquely across the road and prevented us, and this was repeated again and again.  I could have wished I had been driving in Hyde Park, where clowns and boors, with their carts and oxen, do not find admittance.  Exclusiveness has its conveniences.

The next day, as I was strolling through Burlington Arcade, I saw a figure just before me which I recognized as that of my townsman, Mr. Abbott Lawrence.  He was accompanied by his son, who had just returned from a trip round the planet.  There are three grades of recognition, entirely distinct from each other:  the meeting of two persons of different countries who speak the same language,—­an American and an Englishman, for instance; the meeting of two Americans from different cities, as of a Bostonian and a New Yorker or a Chicagonian; and the meeting of two from the same city, as of two Bostonians.

The difference of these recognitions may be illustrated by supposing certain travelling philosophical instruments, endowed with intelligence and the power of speech, to come together in their wanderings,—­let us say in a restaurant of the Palais Royal.  “Very hot,” says the talking Fahrenheit (Thermometer) from Boston, and calls for an ice, which he plunges his bulb into and cools down.  In comes an intelligent and socially disposed English Barometer.  The two travellers greet each other, not exactly as old acquaintances, but each has heard very frequently about the other, and their relatives have been often associated.  “We have a good deal in common,” says the Barometer.  “Of the same blood, as we may say; quicksilver is thicker than water.”  “Yes,” says the little Fahrenheit, “and we are both of the same mercurial temperament.”  While their columns are dancing up and down with laughter at this somewhat tepid and low-pressure pleasantry, there come in a New York Reaumur and a Centigrade from Chicago.  The Fahrenheit, which has got warmed up to temperate, rises to summer heat, and even a little above it.  They enjoy each other’s company mightily.  To be sure, their scales differ,