all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the
aforesaid canny Scot--the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!)
has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do
not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot
from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare
is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you
wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes
inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take,
again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English
barber's shop it is a brief and not unpleasant process; in an American
"tonsorial parlour" it is a lingering and costly torture. One of the
many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people
rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they
submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges
five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in
America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with
the executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge
would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless
processes to which one is subjected; but for my part I would willingly
pay double to escape them. The essential part of the business, the
actual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed, with a heavy hand, and a
good deal of needless pawing-about of the patient's head. But when the
shave is over the horrors are only beginning. First, your whole face is
cooked for several minutes in relays of towels steeped in boiling water.
Then a long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally with the
torturer's naked hand. The sequence of these essences varies in
different "parlours," but one especially loathsome hell-brew, known as
"witchhazel" is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds have to be
elaborately doctored with stinging chemicals; your hair, which has been
hopelessly touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched in some
sickly-smelling oil and brushed; your moustache has to be lubricated
and combed; and at last you escape from the tormentor's clutches,
irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an important appointment, and
so reeking with unholy odours that you feel as though all great
Neptune's ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only once or twice
have I submitted, ou