Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill The Spirit Out-of-Doors MUCH to my regret the Herr Director did not sleep well that second night in the United States. His nerves had suffered from those first thronging impressions, he looked pale and was decidedly irritable ; " for how could a man sleep or be expected to sleep in this business canyon, loud from the thunder of the elevated, and bright from the flashing of illuminated signs ? " Together they had the effect of an electric storm upon him. When he did fall asleep he dreamed that the Metropolitan Tower, the Woolworth Building and St. Patrick's Cathedral were dancing Tango upon his chest. This nightmare may have been due to the fact that just before retiring we witnessed an exhibition of this modern madness, which seemed to be indulged in everywhere exceptin the churches and possibly the barber shops. Partly also, perhaps, because the Herr Director insisted upon eating lobster shortly before midnight, in spite of the fact that I warned him against that indulgence. It was one of those generous, United States lobsters, and not the diminutive shell-fish with which cultured Europeans merely tickle their palates. The Herr Director had repeatedly pointed out our bad habit of leaving a great deal of food on our plates, and to impress upon me his better manners, he had eaten the entire lobster. I had not slept well that night either, in spite of the fact that I had eaten sparingly. I think it was the Herr Director himself who had " got on my nerves," and I was finding this task of "showing off" my beloved United States difficult and exacting. That morning we were to leave New York and I would introduce my guests to the great American out-of-doors, and the prospect added to my already uncomfortable frame of mind. If only we might start from ...