My dear Hannevig, can you believe me when I tell you that I have been in this hotel four mortal days, have eaten three substantial meals a day, have been fairly comfortable, and yet have not seen a human creature, from a landlord to a servant? The whole establishment apparently is run by machinery. There is a complicated bell apparatus which you ring for every conceivable want or need. Meals are served in one’s own room, by a system of ingenious sliding shelves, which open and shut, and disappear into the wall in the most wizard-like manner. Of course the reason of all these contrivances is obvious enough. In a society where labor of a degrading order is forbidden by law, machinery must be used as its substitute. It is all well enough, I presume, from the laborer’s point of view. But for a traveller, bent on a pleasure trip, machinery as a substitute for a garrulous landlord, and a score of servants, however bad, is found to be a poor and somewhat monotonous companion. I amuse myself, however, with perpetually testing all the bells and the electrical apparatus, calling for a hundred things I don’t want, to see whether they will come through the ceiling or up the floor. Most of my time, however, is spent in the streets. My earlier impressions of the city I find remain unchanged. It is as flat as your hand and as monotonous as a twice-told tale. Never was there such monotony or such dulness. Each house is precisely like its neighbor; each house has so many rooms, so many windows, so many square feet of garden, which latter no one cultivates, as flowers and grass entail a certain amount of manual labor, which, it appears, is thought to be degrading by these socialists. Imagine, therefore, miles upon miles of a city composed of little two-story houses as like one unto another as two brown nuts. There are parks and theatres and museums, and libraries, the Peoples’ Clubs, and innumerable state buildings; but these are all architecturally tasteless, as utility has been the only feature considered in their construction. Every thing here, from the laying out of the city to the last detail concerning the affairs of commerce or trade is arranged according to the socialistic principle--by the people for the People. The city itself was rebuilt a hundred years ago, in order that the houses and the public buildings might be in more fitting harmony with the new order and principles of Socialism. What the older City of New York may have been, it is difficult to determine, although it is supposed to have been ugly enough. But this modern city is the very acme of dreariness. It is the monotony I think, which chiefly depresses me. It is not that the houses do not seem comfortable, clean and orderly, for all these virtues they possess. But fancy seeing miles upon miles of little two-story houses! The total lack of contrast which is the result of the plan on which this socialistic city has been built, comes, of course,