us expense. And unless one understands
the rough usage of luggage on American lines, there will be further
trials of temper over the breakage of things. In France and Italy such
small differences do not exasperate, because they ate known to exist;
one expects them; they are benighted foreigners who know no better.
But in America, where they speak our own language, one seems to have a
right, somehow, to expect that all the usages will be exactly the
same--and they are not; and so the cad with the kodak gets his chance.

I can quite understand, even at this day, the making of a book which
should hold up to ridicule the whole of a nation on account of these
differences. 'The Americans a great nation? Why, sir, I could not
get--the whole time that I was them--such a simple thing as English
mustard. The Americans a great nation? Well, sir, all I can say is
that their breakfast in the Wagner car is a greasy pretence. The
Americans a great nation? They may be, sir; but all I can say is that
there isn't such a thing--that I could discover--as an honest
bar-parlour, where a man can have his pipe and his grog in comfort.'
And so on--the kind of thing may be multiplied indefinitely. What Mrs.
Trollope did sixty years ago might be done again.

But, if I had the time, I would write the companion volume--that of
the American in England--in which it should be proved, after the same
fashion, that this poor old country is in the last stage of decay,
because we have compartment carriages on the railway; no checks for
the luggage; no electric trolleys in the street; at the hotels no
elaborate menu, but only a simple dinner of fish and roast-beef; no
iced water, an established Church (the clergy all bursting with
fatness); a House of Lords (all profligates); and a Queen who chops
off heads when so disposed. It would also be noted, as proving the
contemptible decay of the country, that a large proportion of the
lower classes omit the aspirate; that rough holiday-makers laugh and
sing and play the accordion as they take their trips abroad; that the
factory girls wear hideous hats and feathers; that all classes drink
beer, and that men are often seen rolling drunk in the streets. Nor
would the American traveller in Great Britain fail to observe, with
the scorn of a moralist, the political corruption of the time; he
would hold up to the contempt of the world the statesman who with the
utmost vehemence condemns a movement one day which, on the