Thackeray, too, came to New York from Boston, but in his case it was the matter of one unbroken train journey, in the course of which he reread the "Shabby Genteel Story" of a dozen years before.

Dickens's transatlantic trip had consumed nineteen days.

The "Canada," which carried Thackeray, made the crossing in thirteen.

In New York Thackeray stayed at the Clarendon Hotel, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Eighteenth Street; but his favourite haunt in the city was the third home of the Century, in Clinton Place.

Though not in the least given to flattery or over-effusiveness in his comments on Americans and American institutions, Thackeray wrote and spoke of the Century as "the best and most comfortable club in the world.".