“You are going to a journalistic breakfast or supper one day this week,” I said. “Is that your idea of the sort of speech you will make to them?” I asked, for he expressed his opinions with more than ordinary firmness, seeing that the topic was comparatively new.
“Well, I thought of saying something,” he replied, walking all the time about his room. “Do you think the relations of the stage and the press a good subject?”
“Excellent,” I said; “a text worthy of an essay in ‘The Fortnightly’ or the ‘Edinburgh Review.’”
IV.
Taking a quiet stroll along Broad street, and occasionally up and down the thoroughfares right and left, on the first Sunday afternoon of our arrival in Philadelphia, we paused once or twice to note the people coming out of church and chapel.
“You know that part of Manchester called Hulme,” said Irving. “Is not this quarter like that? Could you not fancy we were in almost any suburban part of Manchester? And the people, do you see anything in their appearance to denote that they are any other than English?”
“No; they might be a Birmingham, or a Manchester, or a Liverpool crowd.”
“Better dressed, perhaps, so far as the women go. This absence of strong contrasts between American and English is often noticeable. Nothing in that way struck me more forcibly than the Lotos-Club dinner at New York. They might have been a gathering of London clubmen, only that they all made such singularly humorous speeches. The English after-dinner oratory is more solemn. And the audience here last night,—I could not see their faces, of course; but I felt their influence, and their response to various points was very English. I am told that it is thoroughly American to hurry away the moment the curtain falls on the last act.”
“It certainly is the general practice of American audiences. An English friend of ours, and a popular comedian here, was only telling me yesterday how the habit afflicts him and his company. ‘At first,’ he said, ‘it was terrible. We thought we had utterly failed, and we shall never get used to it.’ He asked me how it affected you. I would not hurt his feelings, of course, by telling him that your audiences, so far, had waited every night to applaud, and to call you and Miss Terry, and frequently other members of your company. I said you seemed to drop into the habits of the country easily.”
“It is very generous, is it not? And I know they are making an exception with us, because my attention has been called to it so often. I drove down Chestnut street yesterday. Have you noticed what a picturesque effect, both in form and color, the signboards give to Chestnut street? And there is something very clean and homelike about the private houses,—red brick mostly, with white marble steps and green blinds. The atmosphere of the place is calmer than New York. I have been reading a new daily paper here, the ‘Evening Call,’—very odd, clever kind of paper.”