"Will you oblige me by spelling the word feeling?" was the first question.
"F-two-e-l-i-n-g," replied the child, without a moment's hesitation.
"Try again, my dear," answered the examiner, with a shake of the head.
The pupil spelled the word over again, in precisely the same manner as at first.
With a dissatisfied expression of countenance the disappointed visitor was about calling for the "next," when, before he could do so, the instructress interposed with,
"Nay, friend, perhaps our system of spelling is not familiar to thee. Under no circumstances do we consent to doubling any thing here."
It is a singular sensation when on going abroad one for the first time finds oneself a foreigner. This is perhaps peculiarly the case with Americans, for several reasons which we will not trouble the reader with developing. We get into the habit at home of considering our national type the standard, a variation from which in any respect is an evidence of oddness and eccentricity. In ourselves we find nothing peculiar, and we can not conceive for a moment that in a strange land, our nationality can at once be detected by signs palpable and impalpable, but always appreciable to an intelligent eye and ear.
An American freshly arrived in Paris, whether Yankee or Southron, is certainly occasionally guilty of a class of absurdities, into which none but a citizen of the Great Republic, would by any accident fall. The lumber-room of our memory supplies us with an instance in point.
In one of the early years of the last decade, a friend of ours, an old "flaneur" in the Boulevards, met accidentally at Meurice's Hotel, an acquaintance just come over from one of the great commercial emporiums of the Union. "The acquaintance" was a personage of standing "on Change," but not over practiced in some of the conventionalities of artificial life. After a cordial greeting on both sides, the new comer put himself into the hands of his more experienced companion, to be initiated into the mysteries of Paris. Now the first wants that an American feels in the great metropolis are material wants; the right place to dine, before the Louvre; a tailor, before Notre-Dame; and a boot-maker, before the Palais de Justice. It is no small matter to carry a man through these necessities satisfactorily, and after all this had been done in the case in question, another want presented itself; some "lingerie" must be procured, such as pocket-handkerchiefs, &c.