you may go down
Regent Street or Piccadilly got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general,
or even a Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at you.
But, in America, you have only to put on a brown hat or a pair of light
trowsers, and you will become the object of a curiosity which will not
fail very promptly to bore you, if you are fond of tranquility, and like
to go about unremarked.

I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too! It was an incomparably
obliging hat. It took any shape, and adapted itself to any
circumstances. It even went into my pocket on occasions. I had bought it
at Lincoln & Bennett's, if you please. But I had to give it up. To my
great regret, I saw that it was imperative: its popularity bid fair to
make me jealous. Twenty lines about me, and half a column about that
hat! It was time to come to some determination. It was not to be put up
with any longer. So I took it up tenderly, smoothed it with care, and
laid it in a neat box which was then posted to the chief editor of the
paper with the following note:

DEAR SIR:

I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good deal of
public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am even
tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my lecture. I
send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will accept it as a
souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compliments.

A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take a joke. The worthy
editor inserted my letter in the next number of his paper, and informed
his readers that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was going to
have it dyed and wear it. He further said, "Max O'Rell evidently thinks
the song, 'Where did you get that hat?' was specially written to annoy
him," and went on to the effect that "Max O'Rell is not the only man who
does not care to tell where he got his hat."

Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as this has no interest
for the American public. It has.

American reporters have asked me, with the most serious face in the
world, whether I worked in the morning, afternoon, or evening, and what
color paper I used (_sic_). One actually asked me whether it was true
that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write his novels on, and blue
paper for his newspaper articles. Not having the honor of a personal
acquaintance with the director of the Comedie-Francaise, I had to
confess my inability to gratify my amiable i