oo. At Toledo once, it nearly
went altogether. Then the next night, after a good fight for it, we got
the theater cool, and the difference that it made to the play was
extraordinary. I was in my best form, feeling well and jolly!

No wonder the Americans drink ice-water and wear very thin clothes
indoors. Their rooms are hotter than ours ever are, even in the height
of the summer--when we have a summer! But no wonder, either, that
Americans in England shiver at our cold, draughty rooms. They are
brought up in hot-houses.

If I did not like steam heat, I loved the ice which is such a feature at
American meals. Everything is served on ice, and the ice-water, however
pernicious the European may consider it as a drink, looks charming and
cool in the hot rooms.

I liked the traveling; but then we traveled in a very princely fashion.
The Lyceum company and baggage occupied eight cars, and Henry's private
parlor car was lovely. The only thing that we found was better
understood in England, so far as railway traveling is concerned, was
_privacy_. You may have a _private_ car in America, but all the
conductors on the train, and there is one to each car, can walk through
it. So can any official, baggage man or newsboy who has the mind!

The "parlor car" in America is more luxurious than our first class, but
you travel in it (if you have no "private" car) with thirty other
people.

"What do you want to be private for?" asked an American, and you don't
know how to answer, for you find that with them that privacy means
concealment. For this reason, I believe, they don't have hedges or walls
round their estates and gardens. "Why should we? We have nothing to
hide!"

In the cars, as in the rooms at one's hotel, the "cuspidor" is always
with you as a thing of beauty! When I first went to America the "Ladies'
Entrance" to the hotel was really necessary, because the ordinary
entrance was impassable! Since then very severe laws against spitting in
public places have been passed, and there is a _great_ improvement. But
the habit, I suppose due to the dryness of the climate, or to the very
strong cigars smoked, or to chronic catarrh, or to a feeling of
independence--"This is a free country and I can spit if I
choose!"--remains sufficiently disgusting to a stranger visiting the
country.

The American voice is the one thing in the country that I find
unbearable; yet the truly terrible variety only exists in one State, and
is not wid