One evening, in the coffee-room of the hotel, having just finished his well-earned dinner, and relaxing his mind for the moment in a fresh research into the Manchester Guide, an individual, who had also been dining in the same apartment, rose from his table, and, after lolling over the empty fireplace, reading the framed announcements, looking at the directions of several letters waiting there for their owners, picking his teeth, turned round to Coningsby, and, with an air of uneasy familiarity, said,-- ‘First visit to Manchester, sir?’ ‘My first.’ ‘Gentleman traveller, I presume?’ ‘I am a traveller.’ said Coningsby. ‘Hem! From south?’ ‘From the south.’ ‘And pray, sir, how did you find business as you came along? Brisk, I dare say. And yet there is a something, a sort of a something; didn’t it strike you, sir, there was a something? A deal of queer paper about, sir!’ ‘I fear you are speaking on a subject of which I know nothing,’ said Coningsby, smiling; ‘I do not understand business at all; though I am not surprised that, being at Manchester, you should suppose so.’ ‘Ah! not in business. Hem! Professional?’ ‘No,’ said Coningsby, ‘I am nothing.’ ‘Ah! an independent gent; hem! and a very pleasant thing, too. Pleased with Manchester, I dare say?’ continued the stranger. ‘And astonished,’ said Coningsby; ‘I think, in the whole course of my life, I never saw so much to admire.’ ‘Seen all the lions, have no doubt?’ ‘I think I have seen everything,’ said Coningsby, rather eager and with some pride. ‘Very well, very well,’ exclaimed the stranger, in a patronising tone. ‘Seen Mr. Birley’s weaving-room, I dare say?’ ‘Oh! isn’t it wonderful?’ said Coningsby. ‘A great many people.’ said the stranger, with a rather supercilious smile. ‘But after all,’ said Coningsby, with animation, ‘it is the machinery without any interposition of manual power that overwhelms me. It haunts me in my dreams,’ continued Coningsby; ‘I see cities peopled with machines. Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!’ The stranger stared a little at the enthusiasm of his companion, and then picked his teeth. ‘Of all the remarkable things here,’ said Coningsby, ‘what on the whole, sir, do you look upon as the most so?’ ‘In the way of machinery?’ asked the stranger. ‘In the way of machinery.’ ‘Why, in the way of machinery, you know,’ said the stranger, very quietly, ‘Manchester is a dead letter.’ ‘A dead letter!’ said Coningsby. ‘Dead and buried,’ said the stranger, accompanying his words with that peculiar application of his thumb to his nose that signifies so eloquently that all is up. ‘You astonish me!’ said Coningsby. ‘It’s a booked place though,’ said the stranger, ‘and no mistake. We have all of us a very great respect for Manchester, of course; look upon her as a sort of mother, and all that sort of thing. But she is behind the times, sir, and that won’t do in this age. The long and short of it is, Manchester is gone by.’