176 WINTER SUNSHINE 



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-iWas 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 — perhaps what some would call " green- 

 ness " — that at home I had associated only with 

 country boys, and not even with them latterly. 

 The smartness and knowingness and a certain hard- 

 ness or keenness of our city youths, — there was no 

 trace of it at all in this young Cockney. But he 

 liked American travelers better than those from his 

 own country. They were more friendly and com- 

 municative, — 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 jus- 

 tified himself, and his interior, unconscious charac- 

 teristics are revealed. There he is quite a different 



