New york is certainly altogether the most bustling, cheerful, lifeful, restless city I have yet seen in the United States. Nothing and nobody seem to stand still for half a moment in New York; the multitudinous omnibuses, which drive like insane vehicles from morning till night, appear not to pause to take up their passengers, or it is so short a pause, you have hardly time to see the stoppage, like the instantaneousness of a flash of lightning. How on earth the people get in or out of them, I do not know: the man behind surely must sometimes shut a person half in and half out, and cut them in two, but neither he nor they have time to notice such trifles. You see them thrust, and shoved, and pushed, and crammed through the hastily opened door, as if they were the merest “live lumber”

Empty or full, these omnibuses seem never to go slower. I have seen dozens upon dozens of them go by perfectly empty, but just as much in a hurry, tearing and dashing along, as if full of people too late for the train.

You almost wonder at the houses standing still in New York, and begin to think them rather slow and behind the age. You feel surprised they are not built on wheels.