in enormous letters
above my portrait in the paper. It will be noted that, like many things
that practical men make a great point of, they miss the point. What I
had commended as new and national was a bathroom in every bedroom. Even
feudal and moss-grown England is not entirely ignorant of an occasional
bath-tub in the home. But what gave me great joy was what followed. I
discovered with delight that many people, glancing rapidly at my
portrait with its prodigious legend, imagined that it was a commercial
advertisement, and that I was a very self-advertising commercial
traveller. When I walked about the streets, I was supposed to be
travelling in bath-tubs. Consider the caption of the portrait, and you
will see how similar it is to the true commercial slogan: 'We offer a
Bath-Tub in Every Home.' And this charming error was doubtless clinched
by the fact that I had been found haunting the outer courts of the
temple of the ancient Guild of Lavenders. I never knew how many shared
the impression; I regret to say that I only traced it with certainty in
two individuals. But I understand that it included the idea that I had
come to the town to attend the Laundry Convention, and had made an
eloquent speech to that senate, no doubt exhibiting my tubs.

Such was the penalty of too passionate and unrestrained an admiration
for American bathrooms; yet the connection of ideas, however
inconsequent, does cover the part of social practice for which these
American institutions can really be praised. About everything like
laundry or hot and cold water there is not only organisation, but what
does not always or perhaps often go with it, efficiency. Americans are
particular about these things of dress and decorum; and it is a virtue
which I very seriously recognise, though I find it very hard to emulate.
But with them it is a virtue; it is not a mere convention, still less a
mere fashion. It is really related to human dignity rather than to
social superiority. The really glorious thing about the American is that
he does not dress like a gentleman; he dresses like a citizen or a
civilised man. His Puritanic particularity on certain points is really
detachable from any definite social ambitions; these things are not a
part of getting into society but merely of keeping out of savagery.
Those millions and millions of middling people, that huge middle class
especially of the Middle West, are not near enough to any aristocracy
even to be sham