Читать книгу In an Unknown Prison Land. An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and home онлайн

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Still, that carriage was a carriage, and not a cab; well-hung, well-cushioned, and well-horsed. In fact, I was not many hours in New York before I began to see that, although you pay, you get. Everything from a banquet to a boot-shine is done in better style than it is in England.

“We are very full, sir,” said the clerk at the Murray Hill Hotel; “but I can give you a four-dollar room. I daresay you’ll like a comfortable night after your passage.”

I thought sixteen shillings and eightpence a good deal for a room, but I found that the room was really a suite, a big bed-sitting-room, beautifully furnished, with bathroom, lavatory, and clothes-cupboard attached.

The next morning I had a shine which cost fivepence, but that shine lasted all the way to San Francisco. The boots simply needed dusting and they were as bright as ever. Then I went and had a shilling shave, and found that the American shave is to the English one as a Turkish bath is to a cold tub; and so on throughout. You spend more money, far more, than in England, but you get a great deal more for it. But to this rule there is one great and glorious exception, and that is railway travelling.