are alone likely to appear in the character | poker, and watch the advent of the new
of wilful peace-breakers.
arrivals. Although but the approach to
We have thus far purposely refrained suites of luxurious apartments, it is the
from complicating the question of Alsace- centre, the heart of the hotel. An hour
Lorraine by any reference to considera- or two may be devoted to the salons, but
tions regarding the solution of the Eastern the rest of the day is spent in this hall.
question. But this question would almost What gossip goes on you hear here; what
certainly affect the action of more than one manners and customs are observed are
power in a general European war; and, as here observed, and this is the place for
we shall show in a future paper, it con- the stranger to observe them.
cerns not only the great powers already
mentioned, but also, directly or indirectly,
several of the minor kingdoms and States.

Ah," said I, "then he met with his
merits when he disappeared. May I ask,"
I added, "with all respect for Judge
Lynch, whether he died a natural
death?
"Why, cert'nly," laughed my informant.
"He died out 'cause he couldn't help it.
He was jist like the mule-jist like that
unfort'nate creetur. He hadn't no pride
of ancestry, and, what's durnside better,
no possible hope of posterity!"

แ

Having delivered himself of this smart bit of epitaph-making, my companion, a high official in the State of Georgia, U.S.A., broke into a prolonged chuckle, swayed backward and forward in his rocker," saluted the nearest cuspidore (Anglice, spittoon) with unbated vigor, and finally got up and joined the group of politicians whose conversation bad suggested my original question.

I am sitting in the large entrance-hall of an hotel in the city of Savannah; it is the lounge of the hotel guests, where they read the papers, drink iced water, smoke and chew, discuss the State politics, play

The hall is a large one, and the painted ceiling rests on two rows of gilded-and dusty-pillars. The floor is checked in black and white marble, and the distempered walls, though unattractive, have a cool effect. The clerk is busy with his accounts and the registration of recent arrivals, behind a counter at the inner end, and there stands between him and the public a screen, on which hang a hundred or two brass keys, each on its numbered peg, and under whose protection the personal effects and bedrooms of a hundred or two guests are rendered safe

comparatively. From the pillar nearest to my chair there projects a nickel-plated iced water tap, called "the fountain; just below is a stand for the common cup and a minute sink and waste-pipe for its rinsing. Whenever any one gets up from the prevailing rocker, it is a dollar to a dime that this iced water is the objective point; indeed, iced water is no longer a luxury among this people it is a necessity. All Americans indulge in it, whether the thermometer indicates zero at Chicago, or ninety degrees in the shade at St. Augustine. Men, women, and chil dren compose the procession to the fountain. It would seem a simple thing to drink a cup of water, but experience leads me to conclude that there is an etiquette attached even to this. The act of drinking strictly alternates with attentions to the cuspidore, or spittoon. There is always one handy. Women as well as men conform to this etiquette, and, what is even more astonishing, in precision of aim and general efficiency in this respect youths of tender age are little behind. I am indeed among the Americans.

They are very interesting, these American cousins of ours. Smart? No doubt about it! As quick as forked lightning, but as angular.

For they are angular, and the "insular arrogance" universally attributed to John Bull may also be "continental," and with equal justice attributed to Jonathan; indeed, the American- the stay-at-home American who merely wanders over his millions of square miles of continent is

Free-yes; but so was our friend "painful and free." It was difficult, but, after a blank stare on our part and a repetition of the admonition on his, we divined the situation, and an adjacent store covered the lady's retreat, while I endeavored to comport myself with cosmopolitan urban. ity. It was annoying-very; but one must acknowledge that it was friendly.

even more (continentally) insular than the | in front of her and introduced himself in Briton. For while the latter is barely sep-a confidential manner with this remark, arated from several ancient civilizations, "'Xcuse me, marm, but yer shoe-tie's each unique in its way, by the "silver free!" streak" of the Channel, for the former there is no such ameliorating vicinity. We in England are perched on the circumference of the wide circle of Europe, with its heterogeneous radii; they, on the contrary, form a circle for themselves, every diameter of which is American. Jonathan's patrimony is a great one, and appeals largely to personal self-satisfaction; but it is none the less true that his outlook is small and bounded everywhere by his own horizon. For, while England is but a "bright particular star" of the constellation of Europe, there has spread from the seven New England Statesthe Ursa Major of the Union a perfect galaxy of self-contained and exclusive polities; and, consequently, it is no paradox to say that the American is insular insular in his pride and prejudice, and insular in his manner.

I remember that, during my sojourn in America, some correspondence took place in a New York paper on the relative politeness of English and Americans. I regret, for the sake of international amity, that the former were stigmatized as "beastly." They smoked, it was said, foul pipes in the street, and carelessly blew puffs of smoke into the faces—and to the disgust

- of "delicately raised ladies." For my part, I could not see the difference between the smoke of a pipe and that of the infeThe American manner is unique, but rior cigars which the Americans largely friendly at bottom. It is not an hour affect; but, then, I was not a "delicately since I was walking on the street in this raised lady." There may have been somedusty, sandy, though tree-shaded Savan- thing in that. Englishmen also, it was nah; not a week since I loitered along the asserted, swaggered through the Boss sidewalks of Washington; not a month City of the Universe "in large sporting since I stumbled over the bulge and bil- checks and cloth skull-caps.' The En low of New York pavements. As I wan-glish, one might have replied, had in dered through each city, I met with numer-nearly every case just stepped off a ous proofs that the American manner is steamer, and were en route westward or friendly, though peculiar. I know most of the great European cities and some of those of the empires beyond the Urals, but I give the palm to the American citizen for "uniquity." Let me quote but two instances.

One morning, while dealing with the difficulties of the sidewalk on Broadway, I felt my arm clutched. I faced about quickly and nearly upset a gentleman with a concerned face. He immediately broke out,

Say, stranger, thar's a striped bug on your hat!"

Astonishment, disgust, and anger rapidly chased each other across my mind, but when on removing my hat I beheld a wasp busy with the bow of the band, I "caught on," as they say, and bowed my acknowledgments. It was peculiar, though I cannot but admit it was friendly.

The second instance. While I was accompanying a lady along a street in Washington, an individual in a glossy black cloth suit and a goatee, who might have been a revival evangelist or a hoteltout, but was probably a senator, stepped

southward; but this argument would have had no force, as the fashion of Jonathan is to travel in high black hat and tight black suit. Occasionally he protects himself from his sandy, dusty railway tracks and the grime of the cars by a long, whity. brown holland coat. But, oddly enough in matter-of-fact America, this sensible individual is the exception, and the "undertaker" suit the rule.

A propos of this, I might mention that while enjoying, one lovely August day on the top of the Gorner Grat, the loveliest scene that the Switzer's land can boast, while gazing at the round white shoulder of Monte Rosa as it slips from its snowy mantle into the ice-stream of the Gorner Glacier-into the crevassed waves of unimaginable blue that a party of four or five hot and breathless ladies and gentle. men made their appearance on the summit of the Grat. There were two gentlemen, clad as I have described - shiny black hats, shiny black suits, and white linen shirts and collars, stiff, no doubt, when they left the hotel, but not when I saw them; no, not then. The whole "get up"

smacked terribly of town and toil. Ten | vacant seat elsewhere. We in England thousand feet above the sea it grated. might cynically suggest that he would Suddenly one lady burst into a rhapsody of the great snow kings standing in eternal silence around them? Oh, dear no! this is what she said,

"Oh, my! Say here, Silas, it's right here where Pap threw the champagne bottle down last fall. Only think! ain't it queer?

And then for some five minutes the whole party craned their necks over the precipice and tried to identify, now in the cool shadow of a rock, and now in a dark patch of lichen, the departed bottle. The quest was unsuccessful, Silas declared that it must have "quit thar," and so they turned away from the summit, and began the descent, quite disappointed. They were Americans.

But to return to the charges against English politeness. The deadliest of all was the lack of gallantry to women. In the rail and tram-cars, Englishmen were said to surround themselves with a barrier of light personal luggage and an atmosphere of stand-offishness, through neither of which would they break even to assist a lady or offer her a seat.

naturally prefer the entirely vacant seat, but we should be wrong. The American bears no resemblance to his British cousin in exclusiveness and impassibility. Not a bit of it; if there is a chance to talk, talk he will; and there is a free-masonry of converse among all who are travelling. The real reason for objecting to take the vacant place, is that the lady might be incommoded, and this no decent American will do.

But there are yet other advantages in their mode of travel. The car system is practically secure from the dangers which threaten, and more than threaten, our small compartments. Cases of murder, assault, robbery, or the minor, but per haps on that account more frequent, instances of insult and abuse, are unknown on the railroads of the United States. There is no possibility of being locked in for a length of time with a drunken ruffian. Such people are rightly enough refused admittance to the train. The number of passengers in each car establishes a sort of public opinion, which in that democratic country is rarely challenged; Now it happened that, while this corre- and the frequent passage of the officials spondence was proceeding, I returned to through the cars lends an additional secuNew York for a week or so, and on the rity to the common weal. There is a freevery first evening of my arrival was jolt-dom of movement, also, in these long, ing up Broadway in a crowded car. As spacious cars, which, while it obviates the we passed Grace Church, the conductor struck his gong, the pace slowed, and a lady sprang actively on to the rear platform, and stood in the doorway. I looked round at my American companions no, not a budge from one of them. The lady advanced about a foot inside—still no sign. So I stood up and offered my seat. Simultaneously a gentleman at the head of the car did likewise. Mine was accepted, and I turned with some curiosity to see this exceptional American. Strange, it was a friend of mine, whom I never expected to see in New York, and a Briton to the backbone!

And yet there are personal features in American travel on which they can give us points. A young woman may travel from New York to San Francisco, from the shores of Lake Huron to those of the Gulf of Mexico, and never experience an insult or affront. She would indeed receive numberless acts of disinterested kindness, offered with no assumption of officiousness, and suggested by a real courtesy. Again, few Americans care to sit down by a woman, on the short seats of the railroad cars, if there is an entirely

necessity of any awkward contretemps, renders a lengthy journey ten-fold more bearable. Despite the rough tracks, risky sociability of the officials who chat and smoke with the passengers almost too much for the safety of the train-despite the exorbitant charges for ten-minute meals at wayside stations, the inconvenience of the "check" system to the novice, and the absence of the genus porter, the mode of travel in America is well adapted to the existing conditions.

With all the contrasts which the Americans present to the English or the Europeans, there is one striking similarity. Their cities are becoming quite as congested. They are growing outward and inward on two ever-diverging lines; the rich are daily growing richer, and the poor poorer. The criminal and the needy are being shut up alone in their slums, and the wealthy are walking apart in their distinctive quarter. Recreation is drawing away from the toilers, leaving them a life without light or relaxation. A man may now die in an attic in many an American city and none know who he is - or care. That old-fashioned town where every house

holder was his own landlord is now the avenues of industry would be cleared and rarity, not the rule. In a score and more elbow-room found for all. But "freedom" cities which could be named "free soup "in America is too often a synonym for is ever and again announced for the peo-"self-will" or "self-assertion," and the ple, ay, even "free bread." It matters absence of any apprenticeship facilitates, not that the benefactor may be seeking with fatal ease, the intrusion of the election or local influence; his act surely unskilled into industries already overindicates the state of things below the sur- crowded. face. The utmost of squalid wretchedness, streets upon streets where life is only grime, dark dens reeking with the stench of disease and uncleanness, the sweaters' rookeries—all these are established features in the large cities of America, and are the more striking because so surprising.

Yet the cause is not far to seek. A wholesale immigration of clanny Kelts, who cling to the fellowship of the cities with characteristic tenacity; a steady inflow from the rural districts, of young men and women who are allured by the glare of city life, and, moth-like, ignore the devouring flame; the influence of literature and the press, which naturally describe and magnify the interest and opportunities of the great cities, to the comparative exclusion of the country.

It has been well said that “All the Miss Mitfords in the world or all the Miss Esther Carpenters, with their charming delineations of life in 'Our Village' or 'Life in the South Country,' do not succeed in counter - weighing the Goldsmiths and Johnsons and Dickenses and Thackerays and Carlyles and George Eliots, whose atmosphere has been a city atmosphere, and who in literature describe what they have seen and known." But whatever the cause, the fact is none the less lamentable. For country life in America has still much of Arcady in it; there is plenty of scope for wholesome and remunerative labor in the agricultural and pastoral districts, and there are still States, which, like that of Ohio, can boast that no one need ever hunger within their borders.

It is refreshing to turn from these everincreasing perplexities to the conveniences of every-day life. There are many things in America which, necessaries there, are still luxuries in England. I cannot quote a more familiar instance than the telephone. It is true that we possess the telephone, but its region of activity is still practically confined to the thronged quarters of commerce; in America it is a domestic institution.

For example, all the shopping that was required for carrying on the domestic economy of my household, in a city at least a thousand miles from New York, could be transacted in the privacy of my flat. Did I need meat, fish, or bread, candles, soap, or scrubbing-brushes, a buggy for a drive, or a carrier for a parcel, I had merely to go to my telephone, blow up the tube, and begin my order with the usual formula, "Hello! Say! Send me right now such and such an article,” and the "hog and hominy," or what not, would arrive in due course. I could be put, in a few seconds, in communication with the doctor, the purveyor of "notions," or with the hosier, who is known there as a "dealer in gents' furnishings and fixings." The telephone, in fact, is a good example of the majority of American inventions, for the inventive genius of America deals almost solely with labor-saving apparatus. Art is in its infancy, and its productions are still imported or copied from Europe; but industrialism is paramount, and the admirable facilities for patenting swell, day by day, the Patent Museum at Washington with the practical inventions of America.

And connected with this malady of the cities, or because of it, there is the con. There is another convenience for the gestion of labor. The strikes, lock-outs, | sojourner and traveller which few Englishand boycotts of which we hear with sur-men who pass through the United States prise are the result of an unwise agglom- detect. It is the frequency of good and eration of weakly elements. For the average American workman is unskilled, and in order to protect himself against the skilled immigrants or the overwhelming hordes of workmen of his own kidney, he resorts to organization. If he would only migrate to the free markets of the country instead of agitating against competition in the towns, become an agricultural laborer rather than a 66 corner-man," the

cheap restaurants where table d'hôte is the rule. Most Englishmen who make the tour of the States never eat a meal out of an expensive hotel. This is a mistake, for it not only involves loss of money, but loss of opportunity to study the more domestic side of Jonathan. A large proportion of Americans "room," as it is called, at hotels and houses set apart for the purpose, and "board out. They differ from the

occasional guests of the English restau- in business; Americans who
rant; they want a good meal, and that night-intruder, that is, let daylight into
thrice daily. The supply proves itself him! I have met men who call the
equal to the demand, and the vagrant En-weather "elegant "- -or the landscape, a
glishman would do well to avail himself road, a particular dish, or the tenth-rate
of it. There are even restaurants where town in which they may be living. A
catering for ladies is a speciality, as the gentleman of some position in the United
following notice outside a New York res- States accosted me one lovely evening in
taurant will show: "This Restaurant is the Indian summer, with,
especially adapted for Ladies, as all our
waiters are Ladies."