America, or the American who has been in England, for a few months
delights to regale his compatriots on his return. Quite recently a
charming American woman who is good enough to count me among her
friends, was in London for the first time in her life. She is perhaps as
typical a representative of Western American womanhood--distinctively
Western--as could be found; very good to look upon, warm-hearted,
fearless and earnest in her truth-loving, straightforward life. But in
voice, in manner, and in frankness of speech she is peculiarly and
essentially Western. She loved England and English people, so she told
me at the Carlton on the eve of her return to America,--just loved them,
but English women (and I can see her wrinkling her eyebrows at me to
give emphasis to what she said) were so _dreadfully_ outspoken: they did
say such _awful_ things! I thought I knew the one Englishwoman from
whose conversation she had derived this idea and remembering my own
parsnips, I forgave her. She has, since her return, I doubt not, dwelt
often to her friends on this amazing frankness of speech in
Englishwomen. And if she only knew what twenty Englishwomen thought of
her outspokenness!

Not long ago I heard an eminent member of the medical profession in
London, who had just returned from a trip to Canada and the United
States with representatives of the British Medical Association, telling
a ring of interested listeners all about the politics, geography,
manners, and customs of the people of America. Among other things he
explained that in America there was no such thing known as a _table d'
hote_; all your meals at hotels and restaurants had to be ordered _a la
carte_. "I should have thought," he said, "that a good _table d' hote_
at an hotel in New York and other towns would pay. It would be a
novelty." It may be well to explain to English readers who do not know
America, that fifteen years ago a meal _a la carte_ was, and over a
large part of the country still is, practically unknown in the United
States. The system of buying one's board and lodging in installments is
known in America as "the European plan."

If it would not be too long a digression, I would explain how this is a
cardinal principle of the American business mind. The disposition of
every American is to take over a whole contract _en bloc_, which in
England, where every man is a specialist, would be split into twenty
different transactions. The American thinks in r