The House Beautiful
WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati boat--either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it, the latter the western. Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were ‘magnificent,’ or that they were ‘floating palaces,’--terms which had always been applied to them; terms which did not over-express the admiration with which the people viewed them. Mr. Dickens’s position was unassailable, possibly; the people’s position was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent--he was right. The people compared them with what they had seen
