"that I haven't happened to say 'I guess,' and that
I don't, perhaps, talk through my nose? But we don't all do that. We do
all sorts of things."

He stuck to it. "You talk like us."

"Well, I'm sure I don't mean to talk like anybody!" I sighed.

This diverted him, and brought us closer.

"And see here," I continued, "I knew you were English, although you've
not dropped a single h."

"Oh, but," he said, "dropping h's--that's--that's not--"

"I know it isn't," I said. "Neither is talking through your nose. And we
don't all say 'Amurrican.'"

But he stuck to it. "All the same there is an American voice. The train
yesterday was full of it. Officers. Unmistakable." And he shook his
head.

After this we got on better than ever; and as he went his way, he gave
me some advice about the hotel. I should do well to avoid the reading
room. The hotel went in rather too much for being old-fashioned. Ran it
into the ground. Tiresome. Good-night.

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you the moral of my Salisbury
anecdote.

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the French
when they visit our shores? Not from the French do you hear prompt
aspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverb
about being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but they
do not inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they like
our hotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer their
own, but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American in
England and the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions.
Are the French more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder if
there is not also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will say
things about our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders
to say those things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle,
which makes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, which
leads us by a seeming paradox to resent criticism more when it comes
from England? I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when I
pick up the paper and read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogs
again, I am merely amused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us,
I am sorry, to be sure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hate
it, even when I know that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am
right in my members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English and
ourselves