On another day the parson began to tell the man with the evergreen heart some interesting things about America. He had never been there himself, but he had a cousin who had travelled extensively in that country, and had brought back much unusual information. “The Americans are an extraordinary people on the practical side,” he remarked; “but having said that, you have said all, for they are sordid, and absolutely devoid of ideality. Take an American at his roller-top desk, a telephone at one side and a typewriter at the other, talk to him of pork and dollars, and you have him at his very best. He always keeps on his Panama hat at business, and sits in a rocking-chair smoking a long cigar. The American woman wears a blue dress with a red lining, or a black dress with orange trimmings, showing a survival of African taste; while another exhibits the American-Indian type,—sallow, with high cheekbones. The manners of the servant classes are extraordinary. I believe they are called 'the help,' and they commonly sit in the drawing-room after the work is finished.”
“You surprise me!” said Mrs. Shamrock.
“It is indeed amazing,” he continued; “and there are other extraordinary customs, among them the habit of mixing ices with all beverages. They plunge ices into mugs of ale, beer, porter, lemonade, or Apollinaris, and sip the mixture with a long ladle at the chemist's counter, where it is usually served.”
“You surprise me!” exclaimed the cutler.
“You surprise me too!” I echoed in my inmost heart. Francesca would not have confined herself to that blameless mode of expression, you may be sure, and I was glad that she was on the back seat of the car. I did not know it at the time, but Veritas, who is a man of intelligence, had identified her as an American, and wishing to inform himself on all possible points, had asked her frankly why it was that the people of her nation gave him the impression of never being restful or quiet, but always so excessively and abnormally quick in motion and speech and thought.
“Casual impressions are not worth anything,” she replied nonchalantly. “As a nation, you might sometimes give us the impression of being phlegmatic and slow-witted. Both ideas may have some basis of fact, yet not be absolutely true. We are not all abnormally quick in America. Look at our messenger boys, for example.”
“We! Phlegmatic and slow-witted!” exclaimed Veritas. “You surprise me! And why do you not reward these government messengers for speed, and stimulate them in that way?”
“We do,” Francesca answered; “that is the only way in which we ever get them to arrive anywhere—by rewarding and stimulating them at both ends of the journey, and sometimes, in extreme cases, at a halfway station.”
“This is most interesting,” said Veritas, as he took out his damp notebook; “and perhaps you can tell me why your newspapers are so poorly edited, so cheap, so sensational?”
“I confess I can't explain it,” she sighed, as if sorely puzzled. “Can it be that we have expended our strength on magazines, where you are so lamentably weak?”