' Reunion House was, I may go
the length of saying, a humble hostelry. You entered through a long
bar-room, thence passed into a little dining-room, and thence into a
still smaller kitchen. The furniture was of the plainest; but the
bar was hung in the American taste, with encouraging and hospitable
mottoes.
Jones was well known; we were received warmly; and two minutes
afterwards I had refused a drink from the proprietor, and was going
on, in my plain European fashion, to refuse a cigar, when Mr.
Mitchell sternly interposed, and explained the situation. He was
offering to treat me, it appeared, whenever an American bar-keeper
proposes anything, it must be borne in mind that he is offering to
treat; and if I did not want a drink, I must at least take the cigar.
I took it bashfully, feeling I had begun my American career on the
wrong foot. I did not enjoy that cigar; but this may have been from
a variety of reasons, even the best cigar often failing to please if
you smoke three-quarters of it in a drenching rain.
For many years America was to me a sort of promised land; 'westward
the march of empire holds its way'; the race is for the moment to the
young; what has been and what is we imperfectly and obscurely know;
what is to be yet lies beyond the flight of our imaginations.
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