do it for
me, and on the American principle, that is, I should get him to study
all the best they have done and then "go one better!"

Unless you are quite in the poor parts every creature in the streets is
spruce and well dressed; men and women have that look of their things
being brushed and ironed to the last state of perfection. And if it is
the fashion in Paris to have hats two feet across they will have them a
yard; but as they all have the same, one's eye gets accustomed to it,
and it does not look ridiculous.

The longer one stays the more one admires that extraordinary quality of
"go"--a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond
European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are
intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at
home, and all are much more amusing companions in consequence.

Last night we went to see China Town with Valerie's brother and some
other young men, and two or three women. Valerie would not come because
she has done it before and it bores her, and no American woman
deliberately does what she finds wearisome. They are sensible. First we
dined at the Cafe Lafayette, which is almost down town, and near
Washington Square, and then started in automobiles which we left in the
Bowery. One always thought that was a kind of cut throat Whitechapel,
did not one? But it is most quiet and respectable, so is China Town,
and I am sure we need not have had the two detectives who accompanied
us.

Outside there is nothing very lurid to look at. The Mayor met us at the
opening of the street, a most entertaining character of what
would answer to our Coster class I suppose. He spoke pure
Bowery-Irish-Coster-American slang, which the detectives translated for
us. It was about this: That he had seen English Lords before, and they
weren't half bad when you knew 'em, and he took a particular fancy to
Octavia because he said "her Nobs" (his late wife, or one of them) had
red hair, too, and "ginger for pluck." He had several teeth missing,
lost in fights, I suppose, and a perfectly delicious sense of humour. I
wish we could have understood all he said, but our host insinuated it
was just as well not! He led us first to "the theatre"--a den
underground, with the stage still lower at one end, where a Chinese
play was going on. The atmosphere was an unbelievable mixture of heat
and smell. And wouldn't you hate to be a Chinese woman, Mamma, packed
away in a sort