noisy, untrained savages trying to "show off." In
hotels, on excursions, steamers and trains, they insist on talking to
everyone, whether everyone wants to talk or not. They are "all over the
place"--there is no other way to express it--and they allow privacy to no
one if they can help it.

Numberless cultivated Americans traveling in Europe never by any chance
speak English or carry English books on railroad trains, as a protection
against the other type of American who allows no one to travel in the same
compartment and escape conversation. The only way to avoid unwelcome
importunities is literally to take refuge in assuming another nationality.

Strangely enough, these irrepressibles are seldom encountered at home;
they seem to develop on the steamer and burst into full bloom only on the
beaten tourist trails--which is a pity, because if they only developed at
home instead, we might be intensely annoyed but at least we should not be
mortified before our own citizens about other fellow-citizens. But to a
sensitive American it is far from pleasant to have the country he loves
represented by a tableful of vulgarians noisily attracting the attention
of a whole dining-room, and to have a European say mockingly, "Ah, and
those are your compatriots?"

Some years ago, a Russian grand duke sitting next to Mrs. Oldname at a
luncheon in a Monte Carlo restaurant, said to her:

"Your country puzzles me! How can it be possible that it holds without
explosion such antagonistic types as the many charming Americans we are
constantly meeting, and at the same time--" looking at a group who were
actually singing and beating time on their glasses with knives and
forks--"those!"

A French officer's comment to an American officer with whom he was talking
in a club in Paris, quite unconsciously tells the same tale:

"You are _liaison_ officer, I suppose, with the Americans? But may I be
permitted to ask why you wear their uniform?"

The other smiled: "I am an American!"

"You an American? Impossible! Why, you speak French like a Parisian, you
have the manner of a great gentleman!" (_un grand seigneur_,) which would
indicate that the average American does not speak perfect French nor have
beautiful manners. There is much excuse for not speaking foreign
languages, but there is no excuse whatever for having offensive manners
and riding rough-shod over people who own the land--not we, who seem to
think we do.

As for "souvenir hunters