The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-12
GIVES IMPRESSIONS : OF AMERICAN TOUR
 MADE BACK IN 1856
EnglishwOmen's Book Dis covered Which Contains Decidedly Flattering
 Comments

London April -0nternational News Service .)-Thls cultured English lady set out in 1850 for voyage to America and an interior tour. Her book of impressions, bound beautifully In fooled leather and with gilt edges. which recently rewarded a literature ! lovers explorations among the second band bookstands of Charing Cross ySoad, is valuable not only for the minute descriptions of trans-Atlantis and railway travel of seventy years ago, but for the analysis of American character, apparently very much made then instead of being in the making The book was published in 1856
 She declares she set out for the new world with the prejudices that seem the birthright of every English person but found "by mixing in so- ciety of every grade that the pre1- udices melted away. Her book seems written in perfect freedom with one exception she is hampered by the in stinctive English fear of depopulation. She warns against emigration to a country that had been made a ''cave of Adullam--a refuge for those who have left their country for their ccuntrys good-a receptacle for the barbarous the degraded and the vicious of all other nations"
 Otherwise, in spite of an ill-fame for splitting, "gouging.st bowie knives, steamboat explosions and slavery, the United States seemed the equal, if not the superior of the mother country, an admission that she tempers with this quotation from Cowper:
 England, with all thy faults I love
 thee still
 My countryl
 But she didn't care for the spit toons. which she found even--in the lady's parlor of a Chicago hotel. Yan- kee slang sometimes wearied her. She was occasionally alarmed by the gen eraI restlessness to which, she said, the .babies of America are early habi- tuated' by the amazing use of rock ing cradles. So many travellers stories and jokes turned upon shrewd business deals, slick trading or -gou ging"-this she deprecated but not as a peculiarity of America.
 Almost like deep recurring sigh aid she make mention, every few pages, of the remarkable gallantries of the American men, even in the backwoods of Illinois. In a wilderness she was a. passenger on a stage coach that was filled; at wayside station a young woman wanted to get oboard; to accommodate her a man gave up his rlace though he would have to wait a day for the next coach. In the hotels ladies were ..always served first and to the best pieces" A roughly dressed mechanic offered to help the tourist with her luggage at Albany "civil- ity which excited my suspicious of his honesty" But when he saw her to her train for Cincinnati she felt real regret at losing so kind and intelli- gent companion" He had requested the conductor to show the foreign lady every attention; and he had i'm formed her that he always made it q roint to assist ladies without escorts who sere burdened with baggage.
 In that ensuing journey she began 10 feel fatigue, and evidently to show l it. She tried to roll up her coat to make a pillow. There were only chair N cars in those days, and:
 "A working mechanic accosted me thus: Stranger, I guess you're all most used up? Maybe you'd be more E comfortable if you could rest your head" Without further barley he spoke to his companion, man in similar grade in society; they both gave up their seats, and rolled coat round the arm of chair, which formed very comfortable sofa; and these two men stood for an hour and Q half, to give me the advantage or it, apparently without any idea that they were performing a deed of kind ness. I met continually with these acts of hearty unostentatious good nature. I mention these in justice to the lower classes of the United States, whose rugged exteriors and uncouth vernacular render them peculiarly li- able to be misunderstood
 The lady must have been quite att tractive. She had been conversing with the conductor of the train who had turned a chair into a sofa, lent buffalo robe and several times brought me cup of tea"
 I've were talking the peculiari- ties and the amount of the breakage power on the American lines as com rared with ours, and the interesting of the subject made him forget to