driver. "You've struck
one of Rayment's excursion parties--that's all--a crowd of
creator-condemned fools mostly. Aren't you one of 'em?" "No," I said.
"May I sit up here with you, great chief and man with a golden tongue? I
do not know Mister Rayment. I belong to T. Cook and Son." The other
person, from the quality of the material he handles, must be the son of
a sea-cook. He collects masses of Down-Easters from the New England
States and elsewhere and hurls them across the Continent and into the
Yellowstone Park on tour. A brake-load of Cook's Continental tourists
trapezing through Paris (I've seen 'em) are angels of light compared to
the Rayment trippers. It is not the ghastly vulgarity, the oozing,
rampant Bessemer-steel self-sufficiency and ignorance of the men that
revolts me, so much as the display of these same qualities in the
women-folk. I saw a new type in the coach, and all my dreams of a better
and more perfect East died away. "Are these--um--persons here any sort
of persons in their own places?" I asked a shepherd who appeared to be
herding them.

"Why, certainly. They include very many prominent and representative
citizens from seven States of the Union, and most of them are wealthy.
Yes, _sir_. Representative and prominent."

We ran across bare hills on an unmetalled road under a burning sun in
front of a volley of playful repartee from the prominent citizens
inside. It was the 4th of July. The horses had American flags in their
head-stalls, some of the women wore flags and coloured handkerchiefs in
their belts, and a young German on the box-seat with me was bewailing
the loss of a box of crackers. He said he had been sent to the Continent
to get his schooling and so had lost his American accent; but no
Continental schooling writes German Jew all over a man's face and nose.
He was a rabid American citizen--one of a very difficult class to deal
with. As a general rule, praise unsparingly, and without discrimination.
That keeps most men quiet: but some, if you fail to keep up a continuous
stream of praise, proceed to revile the Old Country--Germans and Irish
who are more Americans than the Americans are the chief offenders. This
young American began to attack the English army. He had seen some of it
on parade and he pitied the men in bearskins as "slaves." The citizen,
by the way, has a contempt for his own army which exceeds anything you
meet among the most illiberal classes in England. I admitted that o