without explaining to the hall-porter who you are, what you
are, where you come from or what you want: you may there enter and
retire without giving your pedigree, naturalization papers or a
certificate of good character. At other English hotels something
analogous to this is commonly required.

We, who have been in England a full year, look down with an air of
superiority on the raw, the newly-arrived American. We are quite
English. We have worn out our American clothes. We have on English
hats with tightly-curled rims and English stub-toed boots. We know the
intricacies of London street navigation, and Islington, Blackfriars,
Camden Town, Hackney, the "Surrey Side," Piccadilly, Regent and Oxford
streets, the Strand and Fleet street, are all mapped out distinctly
in our mind's eye. We are skilled in English money, and no longer pass
off half crowns for two-shilling pieces. We are real Anglo-Americans.

But the raw American, only arrived a week, is in a maze, a confusion,
a hurry. He is excited and mystified. He tries to appear cool and
unconcerned, and is simply ridiculous. His cards, bearing his name,
title and official status, he distributes as freely as doth the winter
wind the snow-flakes. Inquire at the Langham office for Mr. Smith, and
you find he has blossomed into General Smith.

He is always partaking or about to partake of official dinners. He
feels that the eyes of all England are upon him. He is dressed _a la_
bandbox--hat immaculate in its pristine gloss, white cravat, umbrella
of the slimmest encased in silken wrapper. A speck of mud on his
boots would tarnish the national honor. Commonly, he is taken for a
head-butler. He drinks much stout. He eats a whitebait dinner before
being forty-eight hours in London, and tells of it. All this makes him
feel English.

You meet him. He is overjoyed. He would talk of everything--your
mutual experience in America, his sensations and impressions since
arriving in England. He talks intelligibly of nothing. His brain is
a mere rag-bag, shreddy, confused, parti-colored. Thus he empties it:
"Passage over rough;" "London wonderful;" "Dined with the earl of
---- yesterday;" "Dine with Sir ---- to-day;" "To the Tower;"
"Westminster;" "New York growing;" "Saint Paul's"--going, going, gone!
and he shakes hands with you, and is off at a Broadway gait straight
toward the East End of London for his hotel, which lies at the West
End.

In reality, the man is not in his right