" WONDEKFUL BRITONS !" 203 



soon followed by elevators all over the country. After a 

 generation or so the English caught on to the idea and 

 began to put in timid little things of the same genus, but 

 by no means of the same species, and called them Lifts. 

 By-and-by the people on the Continent saw the point and 

 put in a few still more timorous dcenseurs : " Etonnants, 

 ces Anglais I Quelle invention ! Yoila qui vaut la peine !" 

 In 1854, if I remember right, George Francis Train put a 

 horse-railroad on the Bayswater Road from the Marble 

 Arch to Kensington Gate. I rode on the first car. The 

 scheme failed, because it was not legally protected, and 

 the cabbies were down on it and could not be prevented 

 from driving at a walk on the track ahead of the cars. 

 Horse-railroads were then as old as the hills in America. 

 Again, after the lapse of half a generation, the English 

 caught on and started what they improperly called trams; 

 and later the simple Continental folk followed suit with 

 their Tranvays. Not a suspicion that we Americans had 

 ever had elevators or horse-railroads ; oh no, it was the 

 original, the wonderful, the veritable English lift and 

 tram — " Donnerwetter, was f lir Kerle, die Engliinder ! — 

 and so forth, and so on. 



The French civilian is not, as a rule, as good a horseman 

 as the " militaire.*" There are many high -school riders 

 who are masters of the art. But there is no special sport 

 in which to shake the average Frenchman into the saddle, 

 unless it be those which by imitation he has taken from 

 Albion, just as we have done at home; and these can be, 

 or are, pursued but in a few places. As a rule, the French 

 civilian impresses you as rather finicky in his style. When 

 he rides in the Bois de Boulogne there is a lack of freedom 

 in his equitation, which is well characterized by the con- 

 stant use of the bit rather than the bridoon. And what- 

 ever national method he may have had in the days of 



