‘Sir,’ observed to me a gentleman who was sitting next to me in a car of the Pacific Railway, ‘these rails will carry the commerce of the world.’ I requested him to repeat his remark. I then began to reply by saying, that I thought it not improbable that as much of what was used for tea in the United States as was grown in China would pass over them, when he cut me short with, ‘Sir, it is not to be expected that strangers should understand the grandeur of our country, but these rails will carry the commerce of the world.’ This dealer in prophecy was also a dealer in whisky. [Sidenote: _Letters of Introduction._] Wherever you may be in the United States, you will not find it difficult to obtain letters of introduction to any town in the Union. If an American traveller were to ask an English friend at Ipswich for introductions to Exeter, Galway, Dundee, Carlisle, and Dover, his friend would not find it easy to comply with the request. But if the position of the two were reversed, and the Englishman were travelling in America, and were to ask his American friend for introductions to half-a-dozen places in the States, far more distant from each other than the places I have mentioned in the United Kingdom, the American would either be able to give them himself, or would easily find friends who could. This implies a vast difference in our social system. Ours is a system which isolates, theirs is a system which brings everybody in contact with everybody. One is astonished at the number of acquaintances an American has. For one acquaintance an English gentleman has, an American gentleman will probably have fifty or a hundred. I will repeat here what an American gentleman at Washington said to me on the subject of letters of introduction. ‘We Americans,’ he remarked, ‘are a busy people. We have not time to attend to general introductions. We gladly do what we can, but we cannot do what costs time. Still, however, if the letter is brought to us by one who has ideas, and who has the power of making us feel the magnetism of his ideas, we will give to him our time, and everything we have to give.’