nterlocutor.

Look at the advertisements in the newspapers. There you have the
bootmaker, the hatter, the traveling quack, publishing their portraits
at the head of their advertisements. Why are those portraits there, if
it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers?

The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than the other, those
details of people's private life, and all the gossip daily served up in
the newspapers, are they not proof enough that curiosity is a
characteristic trait of the American?

This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most impossible
questions, gives immense amusement to Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses
them at the expense of well-bred Americans--people who are as innocent
of it as the members of the stiffest aristocracy in the world could be.
The English, especially, persist in not distinguishing Americans who are
gentlemen from Americans who are not.

* * * * *

And even that easy-going American _bourgeois_, with his childish but
good-humored nature, they often fail to do justice to. They too often
look at his curiosity as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not
admit that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses with you is
but a show of good feeling, an act of good-fellowship.

Take, for instance, the following little story:

An American is seated in a railway carriage, and opposite him is a lady
in deep mourning, and looking a picture of sadness; a veritable _mater
dolorosa_.

"Lost a father?" begins the worthy fellow.

"No, sir."

"A mother, maybe?"

"No, sir."

"Ah! a child then?"

"No, sir; I have lost my husband."

"Your husband! Ah! Left you comfortable?"

The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end of the car, and cuts
short the conversation.

"Rather stuck up, this woman," remarks the good Yankee to his neighbor.

The intention was good, if the way of showing it was not. He had but
wanted to show the poor lady the interest he took in her.

After having seen you two or three times, the American will suppress
"Mr." and address you by your name without any handle to it. Do not say
that this is ill placed familiarity; it is meant as an act of
good-fellowship, and should be received by you as such.

If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness' sake, never go to
America; you will never get on there. On the contrary, take over a stock
of simple, affable manners and a good temper, and you will be trea