There is no place like home, after all. On reaching Boston, I felt more like being at home than I had ever felt since I left my own country. Boston resembles an old English city more than any other town I have yet visited in America.

It is, however, no part of my plan to describe the "Hub." I think it is Benjamin Disraeli who says somewhere that "description is always a bore both to the describer and the describee," and I have sinned enough in this direction already; nor have I any desire to make intrusive and impertinent remarks about the inhabitants. I will only say that the few days I spent in Boston were made very pleasant by the most courteous and unostentatious hospitality.

From the classic city I passed on to the Empire City, as New York is sometimes called. I was told long before I left England by warmhearted friends in New York that if I ever visited that city their utmost should be done "to impair my digestion!" They did their best, and I hereby declare my gratitude to them for their generous intentions. Suffice it to say that I eventually got away from them with no more serious injury than could be cured by a few days' tossing and rolling on the broad Atlantic.

Our passage was even rougher and more trying on the whole than the outward passage had been, but we did not mind that; for were we not homeward bound?

I have now been at home about three weeks, and I am already beginning to doubt whether it is an actual fact that such a stay-at-home old fixture as I have always been, could, within the last four months, have travelled something like fourteen thousand miles by land and sea! I am inclined to regard that great land of my pilgrimage as altogether