304 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



horror which supervened, when the waiter, with his accursed 

 German accent, replied : " No drink, sir, on Sunday. It is the 

 law." 



As Virgil sometimes has it, Obstupui,steterantque comes, voxfaucibus 

 hasit ; I had literally never for one single day since I could remember 

 gone without my drink, and here it was only eight o'clock in the 

 morning, the weather already sweltering, and oh ! it was too 

 awful ! I seized a glass of iced water, drank it and shuddered. 

 " This," said I to the waiter, "is what you call a free country ! 

 Thank God I do not live under a republic ! " He only grinned 

 and . . . There is no exaggeration in what I have stated, and the 

 unfortunate inhabitants of New York are groaning under the 

 yoke or solacing themselves by crossing the river on Sundays 

 into New Jersey, where no such idiocy prevails. There was nothing 

 for it, in the instance under notice, but to grin and bear it, for 

 one could not well present letters of introduction on a Sunday 

 and ask for drink. 



To sit outside in Madison Square, a stranger, and thirsty in a 

 dry land, was melancholy indeed ; and then, in sheer bitterness 

 of despair, to lunch off "Cocoa and Clam Fritters " was an experi- 

 ence over which oceans of agony still seem to roll. Then, too, 

 the insulting spectacle of Mr Gladstone's photograph in the hall 

 ah, the whole thing was bitter indeed. ... [A visit to the Central 

 Park . . . ] One could bear the heat no longer and so returned, 

 incontinently drinking lemonade en route, trying pure Apollinaris, 

 by way of a change, at the hotel ; then quaffing beakers of ginger 

 ale ; and finally, after hearing an utterly Scotch sermon by the 

 Rev. Doctor Taylor of the Tabernacle, crowning the terrors of the 

 day with foaming goblets of sarsaparilla, than which nothing more 

 nauseous can be imagined. Verily these New York people do well 

 to point to their statue of " Liberty enlightening the nations." 

 No more remarkable irony could be conceived. Liberty may 

 look very fine there in the bay, and, like the moon in A Mid- 

 summer Night's Dream, she may shine " with a good grace,"- but 

 since she failed to enlighten me as to where in New York I could 

 procure one of the necessities of life why, then I say she is but a 

 make-believe Liberty, after all, and that New York has simply 

 set up an idol which has just the same right to its title, and no 

 more than had Starveling when he says in the play : 



" This Lantern doth the horned Moon present, 

 And I the Man in the Moon do seem to be." 



Such was my first experience of New York, but it is 

 only fair to add that I was all right by the next Sunday, 



