he true nomadic habit of travelling in families, and
the small boy is not left behind. He abounds in Paris; he is
common in Italy; and he is a drug in Switzerland. He is an
element to be allowed for by all who make the Grand Tour, for his
voice is heard in every land. On the Continent, during the
season, no first-class hotel can be said to be complete without
its American family, including the small boy. He does not,
indeed, appear to "come off" to his full extent in this country,
but in all Continental resorts he is a small boy that may be
felt, as probably our fellow-countrymen all over Europe are now
discovering.

There is little use in attempting to disguise the fact that the
subject of the present paper is distinctly disagreeable. There is
little beauty in him that we should desire him. He is not only
restless himself, but he is the cause of restlessness in others.
He has no respect even for the quiescent evening hour, devoted to
cigarettes on the terrace after _table d'hote_, and he is not to
be overawed by a look. It is a constant source of wonder to the
thoughtfully inclined how the American man is evolved from the
American boy; it is a problem much more knotty than the
difficulty concerning apple-dumplings which so perplexed "Farmer
George." No one need desire a pleasanter travelling companion
than the American man; it is impossible to imagine a more
disagreeable one than the American boy.

The American small boy is precocious; but it is not with the
erudite precocity of the German Heinecken, who at three years of
age was intimately acquainted with history and geography ancient
and modern, sacred and profane, besides being able to converse
fluently in Latin, French, and German. We know, of course, that
each of the twenty-two Presidents of the United States gave such
lively promise in his youth that twenty-two aged friends of the
twenty-two families, without any collusion, placed their hands
upon the youthful heads, prophesying their future eminence. But
even this remarkable coincidence does not affect the fact that
the precocity of the average transatlantic boy is not generally
in the most useful branches of knowledge, but rather in the
direction of habits, tastes, and opinion. He is not, however,
evenly precocious. He unites a