ir is breathed over and over again all night long, which is a
monstrous evil in a sanitary point of view.

Another matter, though a small one. At meals, in America, as pepper
is shaken out lightly from a perforated castor over food, so can you
do with the salt, which is in similar receptacles. This is a great
improvement over our English salt-cellars. We have the salt castors
in India too; we call them muffineers there. In India, as a rule,
each individual has both a salt and pepper muffineer before his
plate. If you doubt how far it is an improvement, just try it.

The steamer we came down in was a very fairly comfortable,
well-appointed, and quick boat, but as she went down much farther
south, she would not be due on her way back for some days, and I
cared not to wait. A small passenger-steamer, on the way to San
Francisco, was expected next day, and we returned in her. She was in
every way a most miserable craft. She called at all the coast
stations, and took forty-eight hours _en route_. There were many
Americans on board, but few of a good class. The saloon was as dirty
as any pig-sty, and the table-cloth must have been in use many days
to judge by its coloured appearance. It could not have been
designedly, but there was a capital gravy map of North America in the
centre. Knives were much in vogue, to the exclusion of forks and
spoons. It really was wonderful the practice some had attained with
the weapon. A combination of meat and vegetables was carefully, but
quickly, adjusted on the said knife, and then a slight turn of the
wrist, and _presto_--it disappeared. As the performer's mouth was
nowhere near, what had become of the greasy mass at first puzzled me,
but watching closely, for the sleight-of-hand was marvellous and the
passage between knife and mouth instantaneous, I realized it all!

"You can't say these people _eat_ with their knives," I said to a
nice and exceptional American by me.

"No," he replied, laughing, "you must go to Germany to see that. _My_
countrymen--I hope, however, we don't all do it--have left that
vulgar and dangerous practice far behind. The knife, you see, is used
only as a propeller, and very neatly they do it."

"It must take a lot of practice," I added.

"Doubtless, and so does a Yankee's power of spitting. Their aim in
that way far beats the knife exhibition," he replied with gusto. He
was a Southerner, and evidently no friend to Yankees. "Ah now," he
continued, "that's ba