from Mr. Gladstone, and, looking at the quality, have a right to quarrel even with Mr. Gladstone’s price.  But it is not the quality of the wine that I hereby intend to subject to ignominy so much as the want of any opportunity for drinking it.  After dinner, if all that I hear be true, the gentlemen occasionally drop into the hotel bar and “liquor up.”  Or rather this is not done specially after dinner, but, without prejudice to the hour, at any time that may be found desirable.  I also have “liquored up,” but I cannot say that I enjoy the process.  I do not intend hereby to accuse Americans of drinking much; but I maintain that what they do drink, they drink in the most uncomfortable manner that the imagination can devise.

The greatest luxury at an English inn is one’s tea, one’s fire, and one’s book.  Such an arrangement is not practicable at an American hotel.  Tea, like breakfast, is a great meal, at which meat should be eaten, generally with the addition of much jelly, jam, and sweet preserve; but no person delays over his teacup.  I love to have my teacup emptied and filled with gradual pauses, so that time for oblivion may accrue, and no exact record be taken.  No such meal is known at American hotels.  It is possible to hire a separate room, and have one’s meals served in it; but in doing so a man runs counter to all the institutions of the country, and a woman does so equally.  A stranger does not wish to be viewed askance by all around him; and the rule which holds that men at Rome should do as Romans do, if true anywhere, is true in America.  Therefore I say that in an American inn one can never do as one pleases.

In what I have here said I do not intend to speak of hotels in the largest cities, such as Boston or New York.  At them meals are served in the public room separately, and pretty nearly at any or at all hours of the day; but at them also the attendant stands over the unfortunate eater and drives him.  The guest feels that he is controlled by laws adapted to the usages of the Medes and Persians.  He is not the master on the occasion, but the slave—­a slave well treated, and fattened up to the full endurance of humanity, but yet a slave.

From Gorham we went on to Island Pond, a station on the same Canada Trunk Railway, on a Saturday evening, and were forced by the circumstances of the line to pass a melancholy Sunday at the place.  The cars do not run on Sundays, and run but once a day on other days over the whole line, so that, in fact, the impediment to traveling spreads over two days.  Island Pond is a lake with an island in it; and the place which has taken the name is a small village, about ten years old, standing in the midst of uncut forests, and has been created by the railway.  In ten years more there will no doubt be a spreading town at Island Pond; the forests will recede; and men, rushing out from the crowded cities, will find here food, and space, and wealth.  For myself, I never remain long in such a spot without feeling thankful that it has not been my mission to be a pioneer of civilization.