It is a
case, I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the thought.
Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, "No chiropodist worthy of the name but
keeps at his door a modelled human foot the size of a cab-horse; and
other trades go and do likewise." The "cab-horse" is a monumental
exaggeration; but it is true that some chiropodists use as a sign a foot
of colossal proportions--the size of a small sheep, let us say, if we
must adopt a zoological standard. So far good; but the implication that
the streets of New York swarm, like a scene in a harlequinade, with
similarly Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it is, I think,
that travellers are apt to seize on isolated eccentricities or
extravagances (have we no monstrous signs in England?) and treat them as
typical. Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find everything
gigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably fulfilled his
expectation that he thought it unnecessary to look any further--"ex pede
Herculem."[C]
The architecture of New York, according to Mr. Steevens, is "the
outward expression of the freest, fiercest individualism.... Seeing it,
you can well understand the admiration of an American for something
ordered and proportioned--for the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street.
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