To strangers, above all, were we objects of derision.

Throaty, mid-western voices made disparaging comparison reflecting, not only on us, but on our fair city.

Visiting Englishmen surveyed us through monocles and talked of the buses of the Strand and Regent Street.

There was a French artist, a Baron Somebody-or-other, who afterwards wrote a book called 'New York as I Have Seen It.' He had married an American girl, the daughter of a comedian at whose clever whimsicalities my passengers used to laugh uproariously.

I had carried him often--that actor, and knew him as one of the most genial and companionable of men.