en ones and makes himself equally happy with
those. Both come home triumphantly to show their threads, and to say,
"Behold, that is what I found!" It must be difficult for the same hand
to pick up both sorts of thread, and to present them impartially,
weighing one set against the other and judging dispassionately. There
are some strong men who can do it, and there would be more of them, I
believe, if it were not for that liver. In my case, that organ may have
been in a satisfactory condition, and have prompted me to be sociable.
So I was rather disappointed when I found that there was more formality
in the great Republic than under the old Monarchy, and that if I wanted
to talk to somebody, I had to be introduced first.

Day after day I have sat with my wife in various hotels at some little
table laid for four, sharing it with some other Mr. and Mrs., without
exchanging a word. Elsewhere we should soon have been playing that
stimulating parlour-game of inter-social hide-and-seek, or we might for
the time being have formed a pleasant little _partie carree_. Sometimes
my heart went out to my neighbours, I think in a true Christian spirit,
but I could have seen them starve, and yet not have dared to hand them
the mustard or pass them the butter. I knew they would have looked upon
me with suspicion; yet I flatter myself that, with a little discernment,
they could have seen that I was not a shady character, and that neither
I nor that most artless and guileless partner of mine was capable of
playing off the confidence trick on the clergyman opposite, or on the
charming elderly lady with the white hair and the two golden-locked
grandchildren.

We English are often reproached with our respect for caste. We emphasise
the difference of position in the social scale, whereas the
American--unless, to be sure, he be a Bostonian--takes every opportunity
to emphasise his indifference for such distinction. We think we know a
gentleman when we see him; he rather mistrusts his judgment, perhaps
because he has seen fewer generations of the species than we have; so he
sometimes mistakes a sheep for a wolf in disguise, and only recognises
his error when the sheep is formally introduced, and thus guaranteed as
the genuine article. Perhaps it is that, by dint of proclaiming that one
man is as good as another, the citizen of the Great Republic finds
himself arriving at the conclusion that one man is as bad as another,
and so it is for the str