Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/15



, April 3, 1873. There are moments when I feel that she has asked too much of me—especially since our arrival in this country. These three months have not done much toward making me happy here. I don't know what the difference is—or rather I do; and I say this only because it 's less trouble. It is no trouble, however, to say that I like New York less than Rome: that, after all, is the difference. And then there 's nothing to sketch! For ten years I have been sketching, and I really believe I do it very well. But how can I sketch Fifty-third Street? There are times when I even say to myself, How can I even endure Fifty-third Street? When I turn into it from the Fifth Avenue the vista seems too hideous: the narrow, impersonal houses, with the dry, hard tone of their brown-stone, a surface as uninteresting as that of sand-paper; their steep, stiff stoops, giving you such a climb to the door; their lumpish balustrades, porticoes, and cornices, turned out by the hundred and