EAVING New York on a steamer officered and manned by Englishmen your impressions may begin from the moment you put foot on board. The change from the restless volubility of the Irish cab driver to the icy servility of the Englishman of the servant class is soothing, depressing, irritating or amusing as the case may be. The chattering, waving, gesticulating highvoiced travellers, and good-byers, are apparently of no interest to the stolid stewards, who move about at slower speed, speak in lower tones, do what they have to do with as little unnecessary expenditure of nerve, and muscle, and speech power, as possible. Even before the ship moves you have moved from the exhilarating, bracing, bright air of inland and upland plains, to the heavier and more moist climate of an island. Movement, speech, feature and bulk are different. They are all, movement, speech, feature and bulk, different in a way that is easily and definitely expressed by one word: heavy. Later one finds that this word is used accurately. The English men, women, horses, vehicles, machinery, houses, furniture, food, are heavier in proportion than

ours.

What will you have for breakfast, if alas, you will have any breakfast the first morning out? Something very light, perhaps. These islanders, you soon find, have little regard for lightness. A light dish of eggs in some form, a light roll, fresh butter, coffee and hot milk. Yes, of a sort, but none of them light. You soon forswear coffee for tea, and ere long the passive bulwark of resistance wearies you into eggs and bacon, and cold meat, and jams, for your first meal of the day. Little things are typical. What you want is not refused you, but what they have and like, is gradually forced upon you. Thus they govern their Colonies. No raising of voices, no useless and prolonged discussion, no heat generated, no

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ridicule of your habits, or eulogy of their own, none of these, but just slow-moving, unchanging, confident bulk!

The monotonous and solemn "yes, sir," "thank you, sir," of the servants may lead you to suppose that at any rate this class of English man and woman is servile, is lacking in the national trait of confidence, is perhaps amenable to suggestions of a change. On the contrary, this class less even than others. The manner and speech are merely mechanical. The unblushing demands, either frankly open, or awkwardly surreptitious, for tips are part of the day's work. They are servants, they know it, they have no objection to your knowing it, and most of them have little ambition to be anything else. They are not in that position in the meantime, but permanently; they are not serving, while waiting for something else; service is their career. The American may "sling hash" at Coney Island, or in a western frontier town, until he can escape to become something else, but as a vocation he does not recognize it. At first, therefore, these people are puzzling, we shall see later that they are a factor in the civilization we are about to explore. They have their pride, their rules of precedence, their code; they are fixed, immovable, unconcerned about other careers, undisturbed by hazy ambitions, and insistent upon their privileges, as are all other Englishmen. They will not overstep the boundary lines of your personal position, and they jealously guard the boundaries of their own.

When we come to know them better we find that, although they are of all the laboring classes completely unorganized, without unions or societies, they are the one class who have kept up and increased the standard of wages. As a class they have made no claims, they have not appealed to the public, or to the politician, but they have, none the less, increased their demands, and obtained their demands. This is rather a curious commentary upon organized

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labor. The servant class numbers something like one in forty of the total population. My only explanation is that as they are the class coming most closely in contact with the ruling class, they have absorbed and used the methods of that class. They hold themselves at a high value, assert that value, and wherever and when ever possible, take all they can get. It is done quietly, as a matter of right, and with a sort of subdued air of sanctity. This is the British way, an impressive and an eminently successful way. At any rate, so far as the servants themselves are concerned, they may well laugh in their sleeves at the troubles of the Trades Unions and other societies, which, with much noise, turmoil, strikes and boycotts, have not succeeded as well as they have in bettering their condition. The wages of servants have increased out of all proportion to the increase of wages in other occupations in the last fifteen years. Though I have written that they are unorganized as a class in the sense in which the miners, or the spinners are organized, they maintain among themselves distinctions and gradations as sharp as those of a Court. The housekeeper, the butler, the head coachman, the master's valet, and the mistress's maid, are the nobility and gentry of the servants' hall, while footmen, grooms, maids and the like are commoners. To the average American these distinctions may be merely laughable. Let him come to England and keep house for a year and he will find them adamant. He can no more ignore them or override them than he can alter the procedure in the House of Lords. If he accepts them, well and good; if not, he will have no servants. The butler and the housekeeper are spoken of by the other servants as "Mr." Jones and "Mrs." Brown, and the mistress's maid is "Miss," and woe be to the unlucky underling who forgets these prefixes! At a large houseparty, where there are many men-servants and maids, they take the precedence of their particular master and mistress. You smile at first, and then you realize that underlying the snobbishness, the petty dignities, is the national love of orderliness, the desire for a cut-and-dried routine, the British contentment in having a fixed personal status. Those who have read Thackeray's novels, and his "Yellowplush Papers," have a not inaccurate, though a

brightly colored picture, of the English servant class. Above all things, do not forget the most important factor of all-they are all English, they are all of the same race as their masters. This explains, if not everything, almost everything.

But like all good Americans, let us be moving, let us get on. Here we are at last in London! That yellow ball above the horizon, seen through this bituminous haze, is the sun-the sun sadly tarnished. Those little toy coaches and engines are cars and locomotives. The noiseless gliding out, and gliding into the station, is the English way of running things. No shouting, no nervous snapping of watches, no shriek of whistle, no clanging of bell; a scarcely audible whistle, and the thing is done. These people must know their business or somebody would be left behind, somebody would get into the wrong train; they do know their business. We are soon to find that this is the country of personal freedom, and also personal responsibility. You may do as you please unmolested, uncriticised, unreported, unphotographed, unheralded, unnoticed even, as in no other country in the world, but the moment you do what you ought not to please to do, from the policeman to the court, and thence to the jail, is a shorter road here than anywhere else. So much personal liberty is only possible where justice is swift, unprejudiced, impartial and sure. The lord, the millionaire, the drunkard and the snatch thief are treated the same-within the same six months a great financial schemer, and the son of a great nobleman, were ushered behind the bars with almost as little ceremony, and as little delay, as are required for the trial of a wife-beater, or a burglar. Personal freedom has this serious responsibility, its misuse is promptly punished, and there is no escape they even behead a king on occasion.

When we are in England we do, so far as our temperamental limitations permit, as the English do. We go to a private hotel, small, with a front door always locked and only opened on demand, and we are ushered into our own apartment. For a week now, not another guest has revealed himself. Meals are served to each in his own rooms, and though there is a coffee-room, no one, apparently, uses it. The Englishman brings his home to his hotel. It is not

a meeting-place, but quite on the contrary, a place for personal privacy and seclusion. There are, of course, now in London, great caravansaries, but they are for the stranger, and for the modernized Englishman, the real John Bull abhors them. The rooms are damp, a small grate-fire mitigates the gloom of the sitting-room, but bed-room and dressing-room retain their damp-blanket atmosphere, throughout our stay. A tin tub is brought in in the morning and evening, and you bathe as a protection from the cold. A sound rubbing with a coarse towel takes the place of a fire, or steam heat. No doubt many people die in becoming accustomed to this method of keeping warm, but those who survive have conquered for themselves the greatest empire extant.

The first days in the streets of London bring so many impressions that it is as confusing to remember them as to recall, in their proper order, the changes of a kaleidoscope. It is apparent that the men are heavier here than with us, apparent, too, that this is a land of men, ruled by men, obedient to the ways and comforts and prejudices of men, not women. Here the male bird has the brilliant plumage. The best of them, as one sees them in Piccadilly, in Bond Street, in St. James's Street, in the clubs, in the park of a Sunday after church, are fine looking fellows, well set up, and scrupulously well groomed and turned out. But the women! What hats, what clothes, what shoes, what colors, what amorphous figures! One hears of English economies, evidently they begin with the dressmaker's bill. Who permits that nice looking girl to wear a white flannel skirt, a purple jacket, and a fur hat with a bunch of small feathers sticking out of it at right angles! Here is another with an embroidered linen coat, and a bit of ermine fur, and a straw hat with flowers on it! The grotesque costumes of the women would make one stop to stare were it not that they are so common one ceases at last to notice them. But their taste in dress is nothing When Queen Victoria came to the throne their tasteless vagaries of custom were noticeable. A well-dressed lady is described as wearing, in those days, "a blue satin robe, a black-violet mantlet lined with blue satin, and trimmed with black lace, and an emerald-green hat, trimmed

new.

with blonde and roses, as well as ribbon and feathers!"

The complexions of the English have often been exploited for our benefit. The damp climate, and the exercise out-ofdoors, produce the red, they say. But on examination it proves to be not the red of the rose, but the red of raw beef, and often streaky and fibrous at that. The features are large and the faces high-colored, but it is not a delicate pink, it is a coarse red. At a distance, the effect is charming, bright, refreshing, but close to, often rather unpleasant. Here the features of the women, even the features of the beautiful women, are moulded; while the features of our beautiful American women are chiselled.

The shops wear the colors, so to speak, of the dominant sex. Those that most attract you have in their windows the paraphernalia of the male bird. Shops with guns, and folding seats to carry about when shooting, and everything pertaining to the sport in profusion; shops with windows draped with haberdashery; shops filled with leather and silver conveniences for men; shops with all sorts of hats for all sorts of climates for men's wear; shops with harness, shops with whips, shops with saddles, shops with tobacco, endless shops with potables of all kinds from those with 475., 64s., 84s., 89s., 99s., 1900s. for the particular imbiber; to those with the everlasting "Bitter" and "Gin," enjoyed by the nomadic drinker with only pennies on his person, and no credit. Should you take the trouble to count, you would find that the purveyors to masculine taste largely predominate. The men dress, the women are clothed, and the shops are provided accordingly.

The Englishwoman pretends that the Frenchwoman and the American woman is overdressed, inappropriately dressed. This, however, is only a salve to her feelings, and is acquiesced in by her lord, for reasons of economy. In the country, in stout boots, nondescript hats, and cheap flannel and tweed, the Englishwoman is properly clothed because such costumes are cheap; but in town she is awkwardly clothed because well-fitting clothes of fine material are expensive, and the Englishwoman is not given her appropriate share of the income for purposes of personal

adornment. That is the truth of the matter, that, and the national all-pervasive lack of taste, which accounts for the odd, often comical, appearance of women in London. It might imperil the faith of the reader in these impressions were one to give facts in this connection; if one, that is to say, were to give the figures of amounts allowed to certain women, wives, sisters, daughters, in certain families to dress on. Just as our women are so often wickedly and grotesquely extravagant in their expenditure, so here such matters are on a scale that can

only be called mean. Very often facts, statements from real life, are flouted as isolated, exaggerated and hence untrue to life. Often enough, therefore, a general impression carries more weight, and is, in truth, more valuable. This is the case in this particular instance, as in many others. After an experience of England and the English, covering some thirty odd years, I could easily quote example after example of the pittances allowed Englishwomen for their personal expenditure. Is it not, perhaps, easier and surer, after all, to develop particular instances from general lines of civilization? This England has become the great Empire she is because she is a man's country, this fact at any rate will protrude itself, make itself unmistakable at every turn as we go on, and the expenditure of women is merely one of the minor results of this.

To those who have given some attention to gastronomics either for the stomach's or the pocket's sake, the food provided here is almost more than a first impression, it is a daily, thrice daily, bugbear. Here, again, it is surely the masculine stomach that dictates. Meat, meat, meat and no alleviation. The vegetables are few, and even they as Heine-how Heine must have suffered in England-phrased it: "are boiled in water, and then put upon the table just as God made them!" It is true that one may go to the expensive restaurants, the Ritz, the Carlton, the Savoy and others, and live daintily enough, but that is not England, that is a foreign country with which we have nothing to do. During the past two weeks, I have dined at our own private hotel-which, by the way, it is fair to the student to say, is a first-rate one in the fashionable West End district, at the country house of a distinguished peer of

the realm and at a middle-class restaurant in the Strand. At all of these meat predominated. At his lordship's, it is needless to say, there were fruits, and salads, and vegetables from his own gardens, and there was such variety that a guest might please himself, and must have been overcritical not to have dined well whatever his tastes; but the eternal round of eggs, bacon, sole, beef, mutton, ham, tongue and chicken, with potatoes, and cabbage, and cheese, is the familiar diet of the Englishman. Nor does he complain. He wants nothing else. He demands just this bill-offare. I have heard at Julien's, in Paris, where, when Julien himself presides over your meal, you dine completely, the Englishman sighing for some good plain beef or mutton. He likes it, it agrees with him, he sighs for it when he has been separated from it, and those who survive this sanguinary flesh diet are, it must be admitted, splendid animals indeed.

Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel,

Upon the strength of water gruel?
But who can stand his raging force,
When first he rides then eats his horse.

This damp, cool climate, where, as King Charles said, one can be out-of-doors and enjoy being out-of-doors more days in the year than in any other country in the world, is a climate where the warmly dressed, agreeably exercising, comfortably housed male flourishes like a green bay tree. Let it be borne in mind constantly that these pages are not written in criticism—that is poor business for any man, most of all for a happy man who numbers many Englishmen among his friends-but as a study. Who is this Englishman? what is he? why is he? where and how does he live? above all, why has he conquered the world? how much longer will he be supreme? those are the questions of interest. We are noting facts not because they are pleasant or unpleasant, not because they fit in with some theory of our own, but because they are to light the road we propose to travel among these people.

It is this climate, seldom very hot, seldom very cold, rarely very bright, which lends itself better than any other to exercise out-of-doors, which makes fuel of a bulky and beefy sort necessary. No man in America, not even a coal-heaver, could live the year round on the food and drink

which are the daily dietary of many men here; mostly men, it is true, who spend much time out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, hunting, golfing and the like. Eggs and bacon and sole with tea or coffee for breakfast. A hot dish of meat and potatoes, vegetable marrow, cabbage, celery, all boiled, or cold meat salad and cheese with beer or whiskey and soda, and a glass of port to follow for luncheon. Soup generally very poor, fish, meat, an entrée often of meat, a sweet, cheese and fruit for dinner, with champagne, whiskey and soda or a light wine according to taste, again with port to follow, this bill-of-fare is a fair average diet. Added to by the rich, subtracted from by the poor, until it is the best of good living at the table of a Rothschild, because there is nothing so difficult in all the realm of cookery as plain cooking; or the most awful unwholesome fodder at the table of the poor man, because these elements that lend themselves to the most wholesome diet, lend themselves also to the most unwholesome.

Look at the people who swarm the streets to see the Lord Mayor's Show, and where will you see a more pitiable sight? These beef-eating, port-drinking fellows in Piccadilly, exercised, scrubbed, groomed, they are well enough to be sure; but this other side of the shield is distressing to look at. Poor, stunted, bad-complexioned, shabbily dressed, ill-featured are these pork-eating, gin-drinking denizens of the East End. Crowds I have seen in America, in Mexico, and in most of the great cities of Europe of India and China I know nothing. Nowhere is there such squalor, such pinching poverty, so many undersized, so many plainly and revoltingly diseased, so much human rottenness as here. This is what the climate, the food, and the drink, and man's rule of the weaker to the wall, accomplishes for the weak.

The good old rule, the ancient plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.

But more of this at another time. It is one of England's ugly problems and deserves a chapter to itself.

What an orderly crowd it is! Call it by all the bad names you will, and there remains this characteristic of law-abidingness which has been to me for many years,

and is still, a ceaseless source of wonder. See them at the great race on the Epsom Downs on Derby Day. As you look from your coach top you see a black mass of people. No sign of a track, no sign of a race. A bell rings, two or three policemen on horseback, half a dozen more on foot, begin moving along the track, and this enormous crowd melts aside, makes a lane; the horses come out, dash away, the race is run, and back they swarm again. The same at the Lord Mayor's Show. A few policemen begin clearing the middle of Fleet Street-a narrow street at best. Then mounted police, four abreast, not a word said, scarcely a gesture; no clubs, no noise, a lane is made through these people packed together, without shoving, pushing, elbowing, cursing or angry words, and here comes the procession. I have walked these streets now, on and off, for many years and at all hours of the day and night, and I cannot remember being pushed, shoved, shouldered, or elbowed. It is marvellous. So, too, I have driven through these streets, one, two and four horses, many and many a time, and each time with renewed admiration, not only for the admirable driving but for the good humor, the give and take, the fair play, the intuitive and universal willingness to give every fellow his fair chance and his rights. If that crowd in the city is incomparably and uncompromisingly unpleasant to look at, it is none the less permeated with the national gift for law and order and fair play.

It is not a dull crowd. There are wags amongst them, and much appreciation of their humor. In this particular procession the various King Edwards appeared in appropriate costume, and with attendants in the trappings of their time. As Edward the Confessor appears some one says: "'Ello Eddie, you don't seem to 'ave changed much!" and there is a roar of appreciation at this chaff, and Eddie looks embarrassed enough in spite of his big horse, and his magnificent followers. "Oh, oi soi, 'is beard and 'air don't match!" greets the appearance of another Edward, and again the crowd laughs good-naturedly. But for forty minutes, while the procession passes, and for hours before and hours after, this enormous crowd manages itself. Indeed, it is to be doubted, whether, were there no policemen in the streets, these people