THE BROADWAY. 33 



all chance to cease speaking together, in that momentary 

 silence there is precisely the same noise, but with a more 

 filthy effect, that there is beneath a large rookery at 

 night. The dirt from the lips of men, and the same 

 from the rooks, in noise, quality, and quantity, are very 

 similar. 



The Broadway is certainly a very fine thoroughfare 

 that is, when compared to the deserted by-ways and 

 grass-grown streets which lead from it ; but in London it 

 would have nothing but its length to make it remarkable, 

 for it is not to be compared to Piccadilly. At one end of 

 it, like Piccadilly, getting towards the City, it is confused 

 and crowded by numbers of drays and other descriptions 

 of carts, not forgetting those frightful nuisances the omni 

 buses ; and even throughout its length these huge trans 

 porters of an irresponsible people cumber the highway, 

 and bully any other vehicle less than themselves. The 

 street rails which are laid down for one particular class 

 of these cumbrous nuisances are the greatest eyesore and 

 hindrance to other travel that can possibly exist. Thank 

 "Heaven, London is not yet grown so tyrannically demo 

 cratic as to tolerate such an incubus on the locomotive 

 freedom of the world. How intensely I have been 

 amused at the things the streets afforded, so utterly at 

 variance with the nonsense talked about the " national 

 and beneficial equality of the American people ! " Lum 

 bering along rails, tyrannizing over all other wheeled con 

 veyances, there you have a cheap omnibus ; and when I 

 demur at being 'shut up with " Rowdies " and "Boh- 

 hoys," all of them spitting in chorus between their 

 knees, my democratic friend, who shows me the town, 

 assures me that in the land of freedom there can be but one 



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