WHILE it is true that business is essentially the same the world over, it is equally true that in a great city everything is accelerated. In great commercial centers business is reduced to a sort of science, and abundant scope is afforded for the play of the largest and rarest talents. Nearly every man in cities has his specialty, which he plies, paying little attention to the rest of the world. If one thought predominates over all others in the busy centers of New York, it is that of dispatch. Everything is on a run, and everybody from butcher to baker in a hurry. A clerk fresh from the country, toiling for his board, can scarcely be tolerated on account of his tardiness. Steamboats, horse-cars, and stages are too slow to satisfy the desires of the rushing masses. Every scheme for elevated roads, underground roads, river bridges, or tunnels meets with ten thousand advocates, through the ever-present desire to hasten travel and dispatch business. If you call on a business stranger, however important your business, you must be able to state it tersely and at once, or you will be summarily dismissed without a hearing. Everything goes on the old maxim, "Time and tide wait for no man." "Men get rich in a year, and poor in a day"; "up like a rocket, and down like a stick."