d I overheard this conversation:

"You are Americans, I think? So'm I."

"Yes--we are Americans."

"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you
come over in?"

"CITY OF CHESTER."

"Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard
you know. What kind of a passage did you have?"

"Pretty fair."

"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said
he'd hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from?"

"New Jersey."

"So'm I. No--I didn't mean that; I'm from New England.
New Bloomfield's my place. These your children?--belong
to both of you?"

"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married."

"Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?"

"No--my husband is with us."

"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around
alone--don't you think so?"

"I suppose it must be."

"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again.
Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple
off of William Tell's head. Guide-book tells all about it,
they say. I didn't read it--an American told me. I don't
read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good time.
Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used
to preach?"

"I did not know he ever preached there."

"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't
ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake
than the fishes in it. Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's
Chapel'--you know that yourself. You ever been over here
before?"

"Yes."

"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around
--Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year.
Studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I
know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a mighty
good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of.
But I don't really study when I'm knocking around this way.
If the notion takes me, I just run over my little
old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT GEHABT,
WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT
--kind of 'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know,
and after that, maybe I don't buckle to it for three days.
It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is;
you want to take it in small doses, or first you know
your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing
around in your head same as so much drawn butter.
But French is different; FRENCH ain't anything. I ain't
any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid of pie; I can
rattle off my l