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‘Are you the lady and gentleman that came on the tandem?’ he asked, before he was quite in the room.

We said we were.

‘I don’t like tandems, do you?’ he continued, fiercely, as if he were daring us to differ from him. He seemed to think we had come there that he might tell us his grievances; which he did, with much elaboration, while we ate our lunch. He and his wife had been down to Margate from London, and were now on their way back, he said. They had made the trip on a tandem; it was the first time he had ridden one, and it would be the last, for he didn’t like tandems—they were horrid things! Did we like tandems? To avoid repetition, I may here mention that this expression of dislike, together with the query as to our opinion, was the refrain to everything he said. It was always given with the same interest and emphasis as if it were an entirely original remark. The only variation he made was by sometimes beginning with the statement, and at others with the question. He explained the reasons for his dislike. The principal was, that the people one met on the roads always insulted riders on a tandem. Why, he had been off his machine a dozen times that morning, fighting men who had been chaffing him! I thought, with a shudder, of the crowd of hucksters J. would have had to fight by London Bridge, had he been of the same mind. Then, the next objection was, that he had to sit behind his wife—she had to steer, and he would not be surprised if he were seriously injured, or even killed, before he got back to London. Women were heedless things, and easily frightened. His wife, who had joined us a few minutes before, here grew angry, and a slight skirmish of words followed between them: she reminded him of the dangers they had escaped through her nerve and skill; he recalled the dangers into which they had run owing to her thoughtlessness and timidity. But, just at this point of the discussion J. took out his watch. At sight of it the little man forgot his anger to pounce upon it, with never as much as ‘An it please you!’ Then, looking up in triumph, he exclaimed, ‘I knew it! it’s an American watch! They know how to make watches over there, but they’re ruining our trade.’ Then he explained that he was a London watchmaker, and he pulled out of his pocket a large substantial specimen of his workmanship.

The talk now turning upon America, we told him, in answer to his inquiries, that we were Americans.

‘From Canada?’ his wife asked.

‘Oh, no!’ I answered; ‘from Philadelphia.’

‘Dear me!’ the watchmaker said; ‘then you’re real Americans! But you speak English very well!’