e. If one
asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty';
in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty.' However,
I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences
here until I not only convinced you that English and American are
separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost
purity an Englishman can't understand me at all."

"I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand
you now."

That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms
directly--I use the word in the English sense.

[Later--1882. Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach
the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say "don't you," in the elegant
foreign way.]

ROGERS

This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town
of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His stepfather
had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so
he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in
every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene human
curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look
at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would
notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me
accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion,
pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently
arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he
would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, "Pardon me," and
proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the
edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the
manufacturer's name. He said, "No one will know now where you got it.
I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this
tissue circle." It was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admired a man
so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively
near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher of the "slouch"
pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the
weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed
through.

Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's
door was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the
Pri