through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England "it
isn't done." We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do

stand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman's right to
privacy is larger than ours, and thus that his liberty is larger than

ours.
Before leaving this point, which to my thinking is the cause of many

frictions and misunderstandings between ourselves and the English, I
mustn't omit to give instances of divergence, where an Englishman will

speak of matters upon which we are silent, and is silent upon subjects of
which we will speak.

You may present a letter of introduction to an Englishman, and he wishes
to be civil, to help you to have a good time. It is quite possible he may

say something like this:
"I think you had better know my sister Sophy. You mayn't like her. But

her dinners are rather amusing. Of course the food's ghastly because
she's the stingiest woman in London."

On the other hand, many Americans (though less willing than the French)
are willing to discuss creed, immortality, faith. There is nothing from

which the Englishman more peremptorily recoils, although he hates well
nigh as deeply all abstractdiscussion, or to be clever, or to have you

be clever. An American friend of mine had grown tired of an Englishman
who had been finding fault with one American thing after another. So he

suddenly said:
"Will you tell me why you English when you enter your pews on Sunday

always immediately smell your hats? "
The Englishman stiffened. "I refuse to discuss religious subjects with

you," he said.
To be ponderous over this anecdote grieves me--but you may not know that

orthodox Englishmen usually don't kneel, as we do, after reaching their
pews; they stand for a moment, covering their faces with their

well-brushed hats: with each nation the observance is the same, it is in
the manner of the observing that we differ.

Much is said about our "common language," and its being a reason for our
understanding each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much a cause for

our misunderstanding each other. It is both a help and a trap. If we
Americans spoke something so wholly different from English as French is,

comparisons couldn't be made; and somebody has remarked that comparisons
are odious.

"Why do you call your luggagebaggage?" says the Englishman--or used to
say.

"Why do you call your baggageluggage?" says the American--or used to
say.

"Why don't you say treacle?" inquires the Englishman.
"Because we call it molasses," answers the American.

"How absurd to speak of a car when you mean a carriage!" exclaims the
Englishman.

"We don't mean a carriage, we mean a car," retorts the American.
You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolish

conversations like that; and you will readilyperceive that if we didn't
say "car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board a

train, but called it a voiture, or something else quite "foreign," the
Englishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with his

mother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world is
divided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; and for

most of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, and Eng-
lish. Now a "foreigner" can call molasseswhatever he pleases; we do not

feel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue; his tongue has
a different mother; he can't help that; he's not to be criticized for

that. But we and the English speak a tongue that has the same mother.
This identity in pedigree has led and still leads to countless family

discords. I've not a doubt that divergences in vocabulary and in accent
were the fount and origin of some swollen noses, some battered eyes, when

our Yankees mixed with the Tommies. Each would be certain to think that
the other couldn't "talk straight"--and each would be certain to say so.

I shall not here spin out a list of different names for the same things
now current in English and American usage: molasses and treacle will

suffice for an example; you will be able easily to think of others, and
there are many such that occur in everyday speech. Almost more tricky are

those words which both peoples use alike, but with different meanings. I
shall spin no list of these either; one example there is which I cannot

name, of two words constantly used in both countries, each word quite
proper in one country, while in the other it is more than improper.

Thirty years ago I explained this one evening to a young Englishman who
was here for a while. Two or three days later, he thanked me fervently

for the warning: it had saved him, during a game of tennis, from a
frightful shock, when his partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell him

to cheer up, had used the word that is so harmless with us and in England
so far beyond the pale of polite society.

Quite as much as words, accent also leads to dissension. I have heard
many an American speak of the English accent as "affected"; and our

accent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American,
ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?

His tongue has a different mother!
I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences should

have come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter of
fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literate

and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of the
other's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they by

their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not all
Americans and not all English do in their enunciation conform to these

types.
One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautiful

cathedral and its serene and gracious close. "Star-scattered on the
grass," and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitary

or in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the inn
I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishman in

evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and he
returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I was stopping

expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find a
scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, he

looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that I
explained to him my nationality.

"I shouldn't have known it," he remarked, after an instant's pause.
I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, I

think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same old
mother-tongue!

"You mean," I said, "that I haven't happened to say 'I guess,' and that I
don't, perhaps, talk through my nose? But we don't all do that. We do all

sorts of things."
He stuck to it. "You talk like us."

"Well, I'm sure I don't mean to talk like anybody!" I sighed.
This diverted him, and brought us closer.

"And see here," I continued, "I knew you were English, although you've
not dropped a single h."

"Oh, but," he said, "dropping h's--that's--that's not--"
"I know it isn't," I said. "Neither is talking through your nose. And we

don't all say 'Amurrican.'"
But he stuck to it. "All the same there is an American voice. The

train yesterday was full of it. Officers. Unmistakable." And he shook his
head.

After this we got on better than ever; and as he went his way, he gave me
some advice about the hotel. I should do well to avoid the reading room.

The hotel went in rather too much for being old-fashioned. Ran it into
the ground. Tiresome. Good-night.

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you the moral of my Salisbury
anecdote.

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the French
when they visit our shores? Not from the French do you hear prompt

aspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverb
about being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but they do