s for the cook and the _femme journee_, and they all three say
"Mon Dieu!" and fall upon it with buckets of water. By the time
everything has been extinguished you have made up your mind to substitute
for it just the ordinary explosive stove to which you are accustomed.

I am considered Cold and Mad.

In your own house you can, of course, open the windows, and thus defeat
the foreign stove. The rest of the street thinks you mad, but then the
Englishman is considered by all foreigners to be always mad. It is his
privilege to be mad. The street thinks no worse of you than it did
before, and you can breathe in comfort. But in the railway carriage they
don't allow you to be mad. In Europe, unless you are prepared to draw at
sight upon the other passengers, throw the conductor out of the window,
and take the train in by yourself, it is useless arguing the question of
fresh air. The rule abroad is that if any one man objects to the window
being open, the window remains closed. He does not quarrel with you: he
rings the bell, and points out to the conductor that the temperature of
the carriage has sunk to little more than ninety degrees, Fahrenheit. He
thinks a window must be open.

The conductor is generally an old soldier: he understands being shot, he
understands being thrown out of window, but not the laws of sanitation.
If, as I have explained, you shoot him, or throw him out on the permanent
way, that convinces him. He leaves you to discuss the matter with the
second conductor, who, by your action, has now, of course, become the
first conductor. As there are generally half a dozen of these conductors
scattered about the train, the process of educating them becomes
monotonous. You generally end by submitting to the law.

Unless you happen to be an American woman. Never did my heart go out
more gladly to America as a nation than one spring day travelling from
Berne to Vevey. We had been sitting for an hour in an atmosphere that
would have rendered a Dante disinclined to notice things. Dante, after
ten minutes in that atmosphere, would have lost all interest in the show.
He would not have asked questions. He would have whispered to Virgil:

"Get me out of this, old man, there's a good fellow!"

Sometimes I wish I were an American Woman.

The carriage was crowded, chiefly with Germans. Every window was closed,
every ventilator shut. The hot air quivered round our feet. Seventeen
men and f