except waiters and chambermaids and the Ashburnhams, with whom I
didn't know that I was having any dealings. And, as far as waiters
and chambermaids were concerned, I have generally found that my first
impressions were correct enough. If my first idea of a man was that he
was civil, obliging, and attentive, he generally seemed to go on being
all those things. Once, however, at our Paris flat we had a maid
who appeared to be charming and transparently honest. She stole,
nevertheless, one of Florence's diamond rings. She did it, however,
to save her young man from going to prison. So here, as somebody says
somewhere, was a special case.

And, even in my short incursion into American business life--an
incursion that lasted during part of August and nearly the whole of
September--I found that to rely upon first impressions was the best
thing I could do. I found myself automatically docketing and labelling
each man as he was introduced to me, by the run of his features and by
the first words that he spoke. I can't, however, be regarded as really
doing business during the time that I spent in the United States. I was
just winding things up. If it hadn't been for my idea of marrying the
girl I might possibly hav looked for something to do in my own country.
For my experiences there were vivid and amusing. It was exactly as if I
had come out of a museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. During my life
with Florence I had almost come to forget that there were such things as
fashions or occupations or the greed of gain. I had, in fact, forgotten
that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be
extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one. And I had
forgotten, too, that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered.
In that particular, Philadelphia was the most amazing place I have ever
been in in my life. I was not in that city for more than a week or ten
days and I didn't there transact anything much in the way of business;
nevertheless, the number of times that I was warned by everybody against
everybody else was simply amazing. A man I didn't know would come up
behind my lounge chair in the hotel, and, whispering cautiously beside
my ear, would warn me against some other man that I equally didn't know
but who would be standing by the bar. I don't know what they thought I
was there to do--perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling
hold of some railway interest. Or, perhaps, they imagined