"I was received on Saturday," he wrote from New York on the 4th of October, 1872, "as a member of the Lotus Club--the wits and journalists of New York.

It was the strangest scene I ever was present at.

They were very clever--very witty at each other's expense, very complimentary to me; and, believe me, they worked the publishers who were present for the profit they were making out of me." He was agreeably surprised by the merchant princes of New York.
"There is absolutely no vulgarity about them.

They are immensely rich, but simple, and rather elaborately 'religious' in the forms of their lives.

A very long grace is always said before dinner.