ll English, are you?"

"My father was Irish," he said.

"I knew it!" I cried with joy. "Please shake hands with me again. I
knew you weren't entirely English after that speech!"

He laughed.

"I will shake hands with you, of course. But I am a typical Britisher.
Please believe that."

"I shall not. You are not typical. That was really a clever
distinction and quite true."

He looked as if he were going to argue the point with me, so I hurried
on. I always get the worst of an argument, so I tried to take his mind
off his injury. "Now please go on," I urged. "It sounded so
interesting."

"Well, I was only going to say that in America you are, as hosts,
quite sincere in wishing us to enjoy ourselves and to like America.
Here we will only do our duty by you if you bring letters to us, and
we don't care a hang whether you like England or not. We like it, and
that's enough."

"I see," I said, with cold chills of aversion for England as a nation
creeping over my enthusiasm.

"Now in America," he proceeded, "your host sends his carriage for you,
or calls for you, takes you with him, stays by you, introduces you to
the people he thinks you would most care to meet, and tells them who
and what you are; sees that you have everything that's going, and that
you see everything that's going, and then takes you back to your
club."

"Then he asks you if you have had a good time, and if you like
America!" I supplemented.

"Oh, Lord, yes! He asks you that all the time, and so does everybody
else," he said, with a groan.

"Now, you were unkind if you didn't tell him all he wanted you to, for
I do assure you it was pure American kindness of heart which made him
take all that trouble for you. I know, too, without your telling me,
that he introduced you to all the prettiest girls, and gave you a
chance to talk to each of them, and only hovered around waiting to
take you on to the next one, as soon as he could catch you with ease."

"He did just that. How did you know?"

"Because he was a typical American host, God bless him, and that is
the way we do things over there."

"Now here," he went on, "we consider our duty done if we take a man to
dine, and then to some reception, where we turn him loose after one or
two introductions."

"What a hateful way of doing!" I said, politely.

"It is. It must seem barbarous to you."

"It does."

"Or if you are a woman we send our carriages to let you drive where
you like. Or we s