To return from my digression and my illustration.  I did not do a great deal of shopping myself while in London, being contented to have it done for me.  But in the way of looking in at shop windows I did a very large business.  Certain windows attracted me by a variety in unity which surpassed anything I have been accustomed to.  Thus one window showed every conceivable convenience that could be shaped in ivory, and nothing else.  One shop had such a display of magnificent dressing-cases that I should have thought a whole royal family was setting out on its travels.  I see the cost of one of them is two hundred and seventy guineas.  Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars seems a good deal to pay for a dressing-case.

On the other hand, some of the first-class tradesmen and workmen make no show whatever.  The tailor to whom I had credentials, and who proved highly satisfactory to me, as he had proved to some of my countrymen and to Englishmen of high estate, had only one small sign, which was placed in one of his windows, and received his customers in a small room that would have made a closet for one of our stylish merchant tailors.  The bootmaker to whom I went on good recommendation had hardly anything about his premises to remind one of his calling.  He came into his studio, took my measure very carefully, and made me a pair of what we call Congress boots, which fitted well when once on my feet, but which it cost more trouble to get into and to get out of than I could express my feelings about without dangerously enlarging my limited vocabulary.

Bond Street, Old and New, offered the most inviting windows, and I indulged almost to profligacy in the prolonged inspection of their contents.  Stretching my walk along New Bond Street till I came to a great intersecting thoroughfare, I found myself in Oxford Street.  Here the character of the shop windows changed at once.  Utility and convenience took the place of show and splendor.  Here I found various articles of use in a household, some of which were new to me.  It is very likely that I could have found most of them in our own Boston Cornhill, but one often overlooks things at home which at once arrest his attention when he sees them in a strange place.  I saw great numbers of illuminating contrivances, some of which pleased me by their arrangement of reflectors.

Bryant and May’s safety matches seemed to be used everywhere.  I procured some in Boston with these names on the box, but the label said they were made in Sweden, and they diffused vapors that were enough to produce asphyxia.  I greatly admired some of Dr. Dresser’s water-cans and other contrivances, modelled more or less after the antique, but I found an abundant assortment of them here in Boston, and I have one I obtained here more original in design and more serviceable in daily use than any I saw in London.  I should have regarded Wolverhampton, as we glided through it, with more interest, if I had known at that time that the inventive Dr. Dresser had his headquarters in that busy-looking town.