ed reading one dozen copies of the London
_Charivari_. After a period of exile in regions where current literature
is unobtainable one of the chief delights of a return to civilisation is
"catching up" with the back numbers of _Punch_; nor, in spite of gibes
to the contrary, has the paper ever been more brilliant than under its
present editorship. Yet _Punch_ in this present week of September 11,
1907, represents an American woman, apparently an American woman of
wealth and position (at all events she is at the time touring in Italy),
as saying on hearing an air from _Il Trovatore_: "Say, these Italians
ain't vurry original. Guess I've heard that tune on our street organs in
New York ever since I was a gurl."

The weaknesses of the peoples of other nations are fair game; but it is
the essence of just caricature that it should have some verisimilitude.
_Punch_ could not publish that drawing with the accompanying legend
unless it was the belief of the editor or the staff that such a solecism
was more or less likely to proceed from the mouth of such an American as
is depicted; which is precisely the error of the Frenchman who believes
that Englishmen sell their wives at Smithfield. Thirty years ago, the
lampoon would have had some justification; but at the present time both
the actual number and the percentage of women who are familiar with the
Italian operas is, I believe, vastly greater in America than in
England. This statement will undoubtedly be received with incredulity by
the majority of Englishmen who know nothing about the United States; but
no one who does know the people of the country will dispute it. In
England, the opera is still, for all the changes that have occurred in
the last quarter of a century, largely a pleasure of a limited class. It
may be (and personally I believe) that in that class there is a larger
number of true musicians who know the operas well and love them
appreciatively than is to be found in the United States; but the number
of people who have a reasonable acquaintance with the majority of
operas, and are familiar with the best known airs from each and with the
general characteristics of the various composers, is immensely larger in
America. It is only the same fact that we have confronted so often
before--the fact of the greater homogeneousness or uniformity of tastes
and pursuits in the American people.

It must be clearly understood, here as elsewhere, that I am not
comparing merely