lway porters and guards, all
taxi-drivers, pew-openers, curates, bishops, and a large part of the
peerage.

The terrible ravages that have been made by the Americans on English
morality are witnessed on every hand. Whole classes of society are
hopelessly damaged. I have it in the evidence of the English themselves
and there seems to be no doubt of the fact. Till the Americans came to
England the people were an honest, law-abiding race, respecting their
superiors and despising those below them. They had never been corrupted
by money and their employers extended to them in this regard their
tenderest solicitude. Then the Americans came. Servants ceased to be
what they were; butlers were hopelessly damaged; hotel porters became
a wreck; taxi-drivers turned out thieves; curates could no longer be
trusted to handle money; peers sold their daughters at a million dollars
a piece or three for two. In fact the whole kingdom began to deteriorate
till it got where it is now. At present after a rich American has stayed
in any English country house, its owners find that they can do
nothing with the butler; a wildness has come over the man. There is a
restlessness in his demeanour and a strange wistful look in his eye
as if seeking for something. In many cases, so I understand, after an
American has stayed in a country house the butler goes insane. He is
found in his pantry counting over the sixpence given to him by a Duke,
and laughing to himself. He has to be taken in charge by the police.
With him generally go the chauffeur, whose mind has broken down from
driving a rich American twenty miles; and the gardener, who is found
tearing up raspberry bushes by the roots to see if there is any money
under them; and the local curate whose brain has collapsed or expanded,
I forget which, when a rich American gave him fifty dollars for his soup
kitchen.

There are, it is true, a few classes that have escaped this contagion,
shepherds living in the hills, drovers, sailors, fishermen and such
like. I remember the first time I went into the English country-side
being struck with the clean, honest look in the people's faces. I
realised exactly where they got it: they had never seen any Americans.
I remember speaking to an aged peasant down in Somerset. "Have you ever
seen any Americans?" "Nah," he said, "uz eeard a mowt o' 'em, zir,
but uz zeen nowt o' 'em." It was clear that the noble fellow was quite
undamaged by American contact.

Now th