The duty of allotting the apartments generally devolves upon the head clerk, or chief assistant; but as, from the locomotive propensities of the population, he has a very extensive acquaintance, and knows not how soon some of them may be arriving, he billets the unknown in the most out-of-the-way rooms; for the run upon all the decent hotels is so great, that courtesy is scarce needed to insure custom.

Not that they are uncivil; but the confusion caused by an arrival is so great, and the mass of travellers are so indifferent to the comfort or the attention which one meets with in a decent hotel in this country, that, acting from habit, they begin by roosting their guests, like crows, at the top of the tree.
To obviate this inconvenience, I would suggest, for the benefit of future travellers, the plan I found on many occasions so successful myself, in my subsequent journeys; which is, whenever you are comfortably lodged in any hotel, to take a letter from the proprietor to the next you wish to stop at.

They give it you most readily, and on many occasions I found the advantage of it.

They all know one another; and in this way you might travel all through the Union.
Dinner is over--the events of the day have been discussed 'mid fragrant clouds, and we are asleep in the capital of the State of New York.
We were obliged to be astir early in the morning, so as to be in time for the railway; consequently, our lionizing of the city consisted chiefly in smoking a cigar at the front-door.

The town is prettily situated on the banks of the Hudson, and at its confluence with the Erie canal.