"Beg your pardon there, Master Jack; I know every shop window in Regent-street; I have often been nearly run over in the Broadway, and can easily imagine the turn out on the Boulevards; but they are solitudes in comparison with an Indian street."
"How so, Willis?"
"Well, it is not that there are more inhabitants, nor on account of the traffic, for no streets in the world will beat those of London in that respect—it is because the people live, move, and have their being in the streets; they eat, drink, and sleep in the streets; they sing, dance, and pray in the streets; conventions, treaties, and alliances are concluded in the streets; in short, the street is the Indians' home, his club, and his temple. In Europe, transactions are negotiated quietly; in India, nothing can be done without roaring, screaming, and bawling."
"There must be plenty of deaf people there," observed Jack.
"Possibly; but there are no dumb people. Added to the endless vociferations of the human voice, there is an eternal barking of dogs, elephants snorting, cows lowing, and myriads of pigs grunting. Then there is the thump, thump of the tam-tam, the whistling of fifes, and the screeching of a horrible instrument resembling a fiddle, which can only be compared with the Belzebub music of Hawai. If, amongst these discordant sounds, you throw in a cloud of mosquitoes and a hurricane of dust, you will have a tolerable idea of an Indian street."
"There may be animation and life enough, Willis, but I should prefer the monotony of Regent-street for all that. Would you like to air yourself in Paris a bit?"
"Yes, but not just now; the less my countrymen see of France, under present circumstances, the better."
"What is England and France always fighting about, Willis?"
"Well, I believe the cause this time to be a shindy the mounseers got up amongst themselves in 1788. They first cut off the head of their king, and then commenced to cut one another's throats, and England interfered."
"That," observed Fritz, "may be the immediate origin of the present war [1812]. But for the cause of the animosity existing between the two nations, you must, I suspect, go back as far as the eleventh century, to the time of William, Duke of Normandy."