e or preventive for seasickness, all of which
finds a large sale among the credulous Americans, who by a clever leader
can be made to take up any fad or habit.

The Americans have a peculiar habit of "treating"; that is, one of a
party will "treat" or buy a certain article and distribute it
gratuitously to one or ten people. A young lady may treat her friends to
gum, ice-cream, soda-water, or to a theater party. A matron may treat
her friends to "high-balls" or cocktails at the club. The man confines
his "treats" to drinks and cigars. Thus five or six Americans may meet
in a club or barroom for the sale of liquors. One says, "Come up and
have something;" or "What will you have, gentlemen; this is on me;" or
in some places the treater says, "Let's liquor," and all step up, the
drinks are dispensed, and the treater pays. You might suppose that he
was deserving of some encomium, but not at all; he expects that the
others will take their turn in treating, or at least this is the
assumption; and if the party is engaged in social conversation each in
turn will "treat," the others taking what they wish to drink or smoke.
There is a code of etiquette regarding the treat. Thus, unless you are
invited, it would be bad form among gentlemen to order wine when invited
to drink unless the "treater" asks you to have wine; he means a drink of
whisky, brandy, or a mixed drink, or you may take soda or a cigar, or
you may refuse. It is a gross solecism to accept a cigar and put it in
your pocket; you should not take it unless you smoke it on the spot.

Drinking to excess is frowned upon by all classes, and a drunkard is
avoided and despised; but the amount an American will drink in a day is
astonishing. A really delightful man told me that he did not drink much,
and this was his daily experience: before breakfast a champagne
cocktail; two or three drinks during the forenoon; a pint of white or
red wine at lunch; two or three cocktails in the afternoon; a cocktail
at dinner, with two glasses of wine; and in the evening at the club
several drinks before bedtime! This man was never drunk, and never
_appeared_ to be under the influence of liquor, yet he was in reality
never actually sober; and he is a type of a large number in the great
cities who constitute what is termed the "man about town."

The Americans are not a wine-drinking people. Whisky, and of a very
excellent quality, is the national drink, while vast quantities of beer
are con