cuter" than I; he
had "had" me, an American.

It is a curious thing, and a fact not generally known, I believe, that
all decayed taxicab drivers in London, those who are unfortunate, have
fallen from a high estate. Each and every one of them used to drive
the London to Oxford coach in the days of 'orses.

I met a number of these personages, fat, with remarkably red faces and
large honeycombed noses. Not at all like the alert, athletic lads, a
type of mechanical engineer, who have arisen as cabbies with the advent
of taxis. What do they know about 'orses?

It was such an old boy who drove me from the neighbourhood of Russell
Square, where I was stopping, to Chelsea, where I went into lodgings.
He frequently had the pleasure of driving Americans, he remarked.
"Thank you, sir," he said.

I required to have my shoes repaired, and I inquired of my landlord
where might be found a good cobbler. He told me that there was an
excellent one in Battersea. "In Battersea!" I said. "Is there none in
Chelsea? How am I to get my shoes clear over to Battersea?"

"Why," he replied, "we will send the cobbler a card and he'll send some
one over for the boots and----"

"And then, I suppose," I said, "he will send us another card saying
that the boots are done and so on. And in the meantime I could have
had the boots repaired and worn out again."

Naturally I was for wrapping up the shoes in a piece of newspaper and
setting out straight off to find a cobbler. But my landlord would not
hear of such a thing at all. "Of course you are an American," he said.

I gathered that while such a proceeding might be all right in my
country it wouldn't do in England. He did not want lodgers, I
understood, going in and out of his house with parcels under their
arms. It would reflect on him. He was a man with a lively mind, and
he told me a little story.

"How do you like the new lodger?" asked the first housemaid of the
second.

"Oh, he's very nice indeed," replied the second housemaid. "But he's
not a gentleman. He helped me carry the coals upstairs yesterday."

"Could you spare me a trifle, sir?" asked the errand man in my street.
"I haven't had tea today."

It's a funny thing, that; isn't it?--our just being all "Americans"
(when we are not referred to as "Yankees" or "Yanks"). We are never
United Statesians. It is the "American Ambassador," and the "American
Consul-General." I have even heard Dr. Wilson referred to as th