Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[410] and the influence they exert on a portion of the community, are far from agreeable until one is familiar with them. You would cry out in dismay did you see your baggage flung about pell-mell like logs of wood, trunks, chests, traveling-bags, hat-boxes, all in the same mill, and if here and there something goes to pieces no one is astonished; never mind! we go fast,—we gain time,—that is the essential thing.

The manners of the country differ so greatly from ours that it seems to me impossible to form a just estimate regarding them, or, indeed, to pronounce judgment at all upon a population so active and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without having lived among them for a long time. I do not therefore attempt any such estimate. I can only say that the educated Americans are very accessible and very pleasant. They are obliging to the utmost degree; indeed, their cordiality toward strangers exceeds any that I have met elsewhere. I might even add that if I could complain of anything it would be of an excess, rather than a lack, of attention. I have often found it difficult to make it understood that the hotel, where I can work at my ease, suits me better than the proffered hospitality. . . .