e taken very often in Europe, where it is sometimes noticeable
that our privilege is rather heavy in our hands. Tribute rendered to
English industry, however (our own stands in no need of compliments), it
must be added that for those same easy classes I just spoke of things
are very easy indeed. The number of persons available for purely social
purposes at all times and seasons is infinitely greater than among
ourselves; and the ingenuity of the arrangements permanently going
forward to disembarrass them of their superfluous leisure is as yet in
America an undeveloped branch of civilization. The young men who are
preparing for the stern realities of life among the gray-green cloisters
of Oxford are obliged to keep their terms but one half the year; and the
rosy little cricketers of Eton and Harrow are let loose upon the
parental home for an embarrassing number of months. Happily the parental
home is apt to be an affair of gardens, lawns and parks.

Passion Week, in London, is distinctly an ascetic period; there is
really an approach to sackcloth and ashes. Private dissipation is
suspended; most of the theatres and music-halls are closed; the huge
dusky city seems to take on a still sadder coloring and a sort of hush
steals over its mighty uproar. At such a time, for a stranger, London is
not cheerful. Arriving there, during the past winter, about
Christmas-time, I encountered three British Sundays in a row--a
spectacle to strike terror into the stoutest heart. A Sunday and a
"bank-holiday," if I remember aright, had joined hands with a Christmas
Day and produced the portentous phenomenon to which I allude. I
betrayed, I suppose, some apprehension of its oppressive character, for
I remember being told in a consolatory way that I needn't fear; it would
not come round again for another year. This information was given me
apropos of that surprising interruption of one's relations with the
laundress which is apparently characteristic of the period. I was told
that all the washerwomen were drunk, and that, as it would take them
some time to revive, I must not look for a speedy resumption of these
relations. I shall not forget the impression made upon me by this
statement; I had just come from Paris and it almost sent me spinning
back. One of the incidental _agrements_ of life in the latter city had
been the knock at my door on Saturday evenings of a charming young woman
with a large basket covered with a snowy napkin on her ar