On leaving New York a friend of mine, a Custom House officer, told me he needed a coast coat, suitable to the service he was engaged in, and that he would be much obliged if I would have one made for him in England. He would leave it to me to contrive how it could reach him. The coat he wanted, he said, would cost him £9 in New York. I had it made in London, entirely to his satisfaction, for £4 15s., but how to get it to him free of Custom duties was a problem. I had to wait until a friend of mine--a property owner in Montreal--was returning there. He went out in the vessel in which Princess Louise sailed. He wore it occasionally on deck to qualify it being regarded as a personal garment. So it arrived duty free at Montreal. After looking about for two or three months for a friend who would wear it across the frontier, it arrived, after six months' travelling diplomacy, at the house of my friend in New York. I did not find in America or Canada anything more wonderful, beggarly and humiliating than the policy of Protection. But we are not without counterparts in folly of another kind. Visitors to England no doubt wonder to find us, a commercial nation, fining the merchant of enterprise a shilling (the workman was so fined until late years) for every pound he expends on journeys of business--keeping a travelling tax to discourage trade. But John Bull does not profess to be over-bright, while Uncle Sam thinks himself the smartest man in creation. We retain in 1904 a tax Peel condemned in 1844. But then we live under a monarchy, from which Uncle Sam is free. France used to be the one land which was hospitable to new ideas, and for that it is still pre-eminent in Europe. But America excels Europe now in this respect. Canada has not emerged from its Colonialism, and has no national aspiration. Voltaire found when he was in London, that England had fifty religions and only one sauce. America has no distinction in sauces, but it has more than 200 religions, and having no State Church there is no poison of Social Ascendency in piety, but equality in worship and prophesying. I found that a man might be of any religion he pleased--though as a matter of civility he was expected to be of some--and if he said he was of none, he was thought to be phenomenally fastidious, if not one of theirs would suit him, since America provided a greater variety for the visitor to choose from than any other country in the world. Though naturally disappointed at being unable to suit the stranger's taste, they were not intolerant. He was at liberty to import or invent a religion of his own. Let not the reader imagine that because people are free to believe as they please, there is no religion in America.