wide open at the time of my visit, giving abundant light. The floor was neatly sanded, and the bunks still preserved the severely scoured condition in which they left port.

One of the things which most strikingly divide new and old order in the matter of ocean steamships is the care for ventilation. We had a rough time of it for the first five. days out of Liverpool, and our state-room was once occupied for forty hours at a stretch. In the fortieth hour it was as fresh as in the first. The system here adopted is on the broad principle in vogue in the House of Commons, the best-ventilated Chamber in the world. A constant supply of fresh air is pumped in just above the level of the floor, and, working its way upward as it becomes warmed, passes out through an open cornice in the ceiling. In the steerage and forward on board the Britannic there is an automatic ventilating apparatus which I will not attempt to describe, but which, in conjunction with the windsails, always freighted with fresh air blowing over the Atlantic, keeps up a supply that must be subtly invigorating to the denizens from crowded cities, and perhaps a little embarrassing to the Finns.

As to food, the boundless hospitality which reigns in the saloon is here diffused. Perhaps

for the first time in their lives these seven hundred men, women, and children live in a land where it is always meal-time. There are three regulation meals on the day of my visit thus provided for :-Breakfast: Irish stew, fresh bread and butter, tea, and coffee. Dinner: Soup, fresh beef and potatoes, stewed apples, and rice. Tea: Fresh bread and butter, tea, and gruel.

"It is," as a pale-faced man said to me with a gleam of tender recollection in his eyes, "cut and come again."

Every one can have as many helpings as he pleases, and towards the middle of the voyage, when they find their sea-legs, they please in a manner truly appalling. Lest they should feel hungry between whiles there are three large open barrels set by the main gangway. One contains biscuits, another rusks, and a third butter. At any hour of the day or night these may be dipped into. There is also throughout the day tea and coffee always going. From time to time a barrel of herrings is opened, and anon a barrel of apples, into which all are free to dip. How all this can be done at four guineas a head, the current rate of steerage passage, is a problem which I trust the owners have satisfactorily solved.

At the time of my visit the passengers were all on deck-all but seven. These were

a wondering white kitten, two canaries in a cage in the steerage, three thrushes in a large wicker cage forward, and in one of the berths a lusty infant, six weeks old, laughing and crowing and evidently in a state of profound satisfaction with the world as far as he had yet seen it.

CHAPTER II.

NEW YORK CITY.

Ir is a pity that the first consideration forced upon the attention of the foreign visitor on landing at New York is the state of the roads. As far as I know, no civilized town-certainly no capital city-has thoroughfares in such a condition as those which disgrace New York. It is urged in extenuation that the tram-cars make good roads impossible, and that, as everybody travels by cars, the state of the roads outside the rails does not much matter. But neither of these assertions will bear consideration. New York is not the only city in the world that has trams. We have them in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and most English towns. Yet the roads are kept in good condition. The tram lines in New York would of themselves make a British vestryman stare. In London the lines are laid with the flange on one side level with the

road, and the grove as narrow as possible, with the object of preventing wheels of cabs and carriages from locking. Here, in the centre of mechanical activity and ingenuity, are found the old open rails of the time of George Francis Train, pitfalls for the unwary hackney coaches, traps for the hapless omnibuses.

Outside the rails the roadway is in a pitiable condition. To drive from the White Star Wharf to the Windsor Hotel is a transit

more perilous than a voyage across the Atlantic. In respect of the condition of the roads there is not much to choose between up town and down town. Fifth Avenue is admittedly the principal street in New York. Yet I can see out of the window at which I write-immediately in front of the Windsor Hotel, within a stone's throw of the Vanderbilt mansion, in the middle of the thoroughfare along which the wealth and fashion of New York daily drive-a hole in the roadway two feet long, a foot broad, and from three to four inches in depth. Skibbereen does not shine in the matter of roadways; but if opposite the hotel in Main Street there were a hole of this kind, the population would turn out in a body and denounce the Saxon Government.

The whole question of street locomotion in