of their presence to any undertaking of the
French Government, and called attention again and again to their
absence from the exhibition. I myself was asked a number of times
in England whether this absence were a noticeable thing; but truth
compelled me to admit that it was not. With Paris brimming over like
a cup filled to the lip, with streets and fair-grounds thronged, with
every hotel crowded and every cab engaged, and with twenty thousand
of my own countrymen clamorously enlivening the scene, it was not
possible to miss anybody anywhere. It obviously had not occurred to
Americans to see any connection between the trial of Captain Dreyfus
and their enjoyment of the most beautiful and brilliant thing that
Europe had to give. The pretty adage, "_Tout homme a deux pays: le
sien et puis la France_," is truer of us than of any other people
in the world. And we may as well pardon a nation her transgressions,
if we cannot keep away from her shores.

England's public utterances anent the United States are of the
friendliest character. Her newspapers and magazines say flattering
things about us. Her poet-laureate--unlike his great predecessor who
unaffectedly detested us--began his official career by praising us
with such fervour that we felt we ought in common honesty to tell
him that we were nothing like so good as he thought us. An English
text-book, published a few years ago, explains generously to the
school-boys of Great Britain that the United States should not be
looked upon as a foreign nation. "They are peopled by men of our blood
and faith, enjoy in a great measure the same laws that we do, read
the same Bible, and acknowledge, like us, the rule of King
Shakespeare."

All this is very pleasant, but the fact remains that Englishmen
express surprise and pain at our most innocent idiosyncrasies. They
correct our pronunciation and our misuse of words. They regret our
nomadic habits, our shrill voices, our troublesome children, our
inability to climb mountains or "do a little glacier work" (it sounds
like embroidery, but means scrambling perilously over ice), our
taste for unwholesome--or, in other words, seasoned--food. When I
am reproved by English acquaintances for the "Americanisms" which
disfigure my speech and proclaim my nationality, I cannot well defend
myself by asserting that I read the same Bible as they do,--for maybe,
after all, I don't.

The tenacity with which English residents on the Continent clin