With the World’s Great Travellers, Volume 2 by Alexander von Humboldt

The reflective voyager, on his first sight of New York, is baffled when he attempts to catalogue his sensations. All is so completely in contrast with the capitals of Europe. The gloriously bright sky, air that drinks like champagne, the resultant springiness of life and movement, that overdoes itself in excitement and premature exhaustion, and the obtrusively visible defects of this surface enthusiasm, monotonous streets, unfinished or unbegun city improvements, and the conspicuous lack of play-spaces for children—this is the rough portrait sketch New York draws of itself for the newcomer.