196 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



turned from Paris the only person in the second class 

 compartments of the car with me, for a long distance, 

 was an English youth eighteen or twenty years old, 

 returning home to London after an absence of nearly 

 a year, which he had spent as waiter in a Parisian 

 hotel. He was born in London and had spent nearly 

 his whole life there, where his mother, a widow, then 

 lived. He talked very freely with me, and told me 

 his troubles, and plans, and hopes, as if we had long 

 known each other. What especially struck me in the 

 youth was a kind of sweetness and innocence per- 

 haps what some would call " greenness " that at 

 home I had associated only with country boys and 

 not even with them latterly. The smartness and 

 knowingness and a certain hardness or keenness of 

 our city youths, there was no trace of it at all in 

 this young Cockney. But he liked American travel- 

 ers better than those from his own country. They 

 were more friendly and communicative were not 

 so afraid to speak to " a fellow," and at the hotel 

 were more easily pleased. 



The American is certainly not the grumbler the 

 Englishman is ; he is more cosmopolitan and concil- 

 iatory. The Englishman will not adapt himself to 

 his surroundings ; he is not the least bit an imitative 

 animal ; he will be nothing but an Englishman, and 

 is out of place an anomaly in any country but 

 his own. To understand him, you must see him at 

 home in the British island, where he grew, where he 

 belongs, where he has expressed himself and justified 



