CHAPTER XXXII.
AMERICAN VISITS.
A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where my wife and daughters arranged them and kept them safely, till on my return after three months travel I pasted them duly into this big book.
If I were to record a tithe of the myriad memorabilia there entered, the present volume now in progress would not afford space even for a tithe of that: and after all, the result would only appear as a record of numerous private hospitalities (which I object to making public), of sundry well-appreciated kindnesses, compliments, and tokens of honour from stranger friends in many cities, and the numerous incidents that a tourist visitor ordinarily experiences; most of which, although paragraphed in a gossiping fashion through hundreds of the 3000 American papers, are not worth recording here.

In fact, I look at this enormous volume with despair,--the more so that there is its other equally bulky brother about my second visit,--and so intend to give only some samples of both.

The world is too full of books, and does not call out for another American Journal.

The main social interest of my two visits consisted in the contrast shown between the one in 1851 and that in 1876, just a quarter of a century after; between in fact the extreme drinking habits of one generation and the extreme temperance of another: mainly due, amongst other causes, to the overflowing prosperities of the middle of this century and the comparative adversities of its declining years.

"Jeshurun once waxed fat, and kicked,"-- but since then he has become one of the "lean kine:" wines and spirits were formerly in abundance as well as hard dollars, but have now been replaced by the cheaper water and discredited paper.