The greengrocer was much edified, and told me that he was the agent for the district of Billy Sunday, the revivalist. Wouldn't I stay and address a mass meeting?

I fought shy of this offer. The journalist looked somewhat sourly at the greengrocer for breaking into his interrogatory. But then a third interrupter appeared, a little boy, who had come to purchase bananas, and he addressed me thus:

"On which side did your family fight in the year 1745? On the side of Prince Charlie? That's the side I'm on."

No descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers he.

On the way out to Lacarne two old fishermen in a cart offered me a ride, and I stepped up.

"What are you, German ?" I asked, always on the look-out for the immigrant.

"We are Yankees."

"Your father or grandfather came from Germany ?" "No; we're both Yankees, I tell yer."

suppose your ancestors came from England then." "No; we've always bin 'ere."

They had been out three nights seine-fishing on the lake, were very tired, and rewarded themselves with swigs of rum every now and then, passing the bottle from one to the other and then to me with real but suspicious hospitality. Their families had always been in America. The fact that they came originally

from England meant no more to them than Hengist and Horsa does to some of us.

By the way, Hengist and Horsa were a couple of savages, were they not?

The fishermen put me down beside a plantation, which they said was just the place in which to sleep the night. I wasn't sorry to get on to my feet again, and I watched them out of sight, fat, old, sleepy, hospitable ruffians.

The plantation was a mosquito-infested swamp, and I did not take the fishermen's advice. Myriads of "husky" mosquitoes were in the air, the unpleasanter sort, with feathered antennæ, and whenever I stood still on the road scores of "Canadian soldiers" settled on me, a loathsome but innocuous species of diptera.

I sought shelter of man that night, and through the hospitality of a Slav workman found a place in a freight train a strange bed that not only allows you to sleep, but takes you a dozen miles farther on in the morning. The engine-driver told me that there was a “whole bunch of tramps" on the train, but that no one ever turned tramps off an empty freight train, -not on the Lake Shore railway at any rate.

When I "dropped" from the freighter I found myself at Elliston, and commenced there a day of delicious tramping. The opal dawn gave birth to a great white horse of cloud, and out of the cloud came

a strong fresh breeze, having health and happiness on its wings. A quiet Sunday. I reached Toledo this day and parted company with Erie Shore - great, busy, happy, prosperous Toledo. It was strange to exchange the country for the town; to come out of the green, fresh, silent landscape into the close, stifling, bustling town, full of promenaders talking and laughing among themselves vociferously.

As I came into the city the day-excursion boat was just about to start on the return journey to Detroit. Excursionists were flocking together to the quay, a great spectacle to a Briton. All the men were carrying their coats in their arms, many had their collars off and the neckbands of their shirts turned down, bunches of carnations on their naked chests; many were without waistcoats, and had tickets with the name of their town pinned to their fancy-coloured shirts; the red, perspiring, glistening faces of many of them suggested an over-confidence in beer as a quencher of thirst. The women carried parasols of coloured paper. They were all in white, and were so thinly clad that you asked yourself why they were so thin. But despite all precautions the sun had marked everybody, but marked them kindly.

Suddenly a bell was rung on the steamer, and a little man came forward and announced in broken English: "Somebody wan' to come on the boat; the time is supp.'

XIV

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

EVEN Americans of the highest culture and of Boston families speak English differently from any people in the old country. The difference may not be obvious to all, but it is there, and it is a thing to rejoice in, not to be sorry for. The American nation is different from the British, has different history and a different hope; it has a different soul, therefore its expression should be different. The American face as a type is different; it would be folly to correct the words of the mouth by Oxford, or Eton, or Granville Barker's theatre, or the cultured Aberdonian, or any other criterion. The use of American expressions of quite moderate tone amounts to a breach of good taste in many British drawing-rooms; and if you tell a story in which American conversation is repeated with the accent imitated, you can feel the temperature going down as you proceed; that is, if you are not merely making fun of the Americans. Making fun of any foreign people is always tolerable to the British; a truly national and insular trait. The literary world and the working men and women of

Britain can enter into the American spirit, and even imitate it upon occasion; but that is only the misfortune of our populace, who ought to be finding national expression in journalism and music-hall songs and dancing, and who are merely going off the lines by imitating a foreign country. It is loss to Britain that the Americans speak a comprehensible dialect of our tongue, and that the journalist of Fleet Street, when he is hard-up for wit, should take scissors and paste and snip out stories from American papers; or that commercial entrepreneurs should bring to the British public things thought to be sure of success because they have succeeded in America - "Within the Law," "I Should Worry," "Hullo Ragtime!" and the rest. The people who are surest in instinct, though they are sympathetic to a brother-people, hate the importation of foreign uglinesses, and the substitution of foreign for local talent.

The American language is chiefly distinguished from the British by its emphatic expressive character. Britain, as I have said, lives in a tradition; America in a passion. We are laconic, accidental, inarticulate; our duty is plain, and we do it without words. But the American is affirmative, emphatic, striving; he has to find out what he's going to do next, and he has got to use strong words. Britain also is the place of an acknowledged Caste system; but America is the place of equal citizens, and many American