TORONTO--THE CITY--THE LADIES--THE SPORTS--STRANGE CONTRASTS--THE CANADIAN SCHOOLS. _Toronto, February 9._ Have passed three very pleasant days in this city, and had two beautiful audiences in the Pavilion. Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance, but only in appearance, for I find the inhabitants British in heart, in tastes, and habits. When I say that it is an American city, I mean to say that Toronto is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms and dirty streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph and telephone wires. The hotels are perfectly American in every respect. The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once more are fine villas standing in large gardens, a sight rarely seen near an American city. It reminds me of England. I admire many buildings, the University[2] especially. English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the Toronto ladies whom I passed in my drive. How charming they are with the peach-like bloom that their outdoor exercise gives them! I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves, the sight of these Canadian women in their sleighs, as the horses fly along with bells merrily jingling, the coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge busby on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh, and, in it, muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins and also capped in furs, sits the radiant, lovely Canadienne, the milk and roses of her complexion enhanced by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past over the white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky, I can call to mind no prettier sight, no more beautiful picture, to be seen on this huge continent, so far as I have got yet. One cannot help being struck, on coming here from the United States, at the number of lady pedestrians in the streets. They are not merely shopping, I am assured, nor going straight from one point to another of the town, but taking their constitutional walks in true English fashion. My impresario took me in the afternoon to a club for ladies and gentlemen, and there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey. On a large frozen pond there was a party of young people engaged in this graceful and invigorating game, and not far off was a group of little girls and boys imitating their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of the Canadian women is easy to account for, when one sees how deep-rooted, even after transplantation, is the good British love of exercise in the open air. Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to see more of the Canadian ladies than is possible in furs, and on further acquaintance I found them as delightful in manners as in appearance; English in their coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in their natural bearing and in their frankness of speech. * * * * * [Illustration: A HOCKEY PLAYER.]