Original HAD heard so much from English sources of the precocity and forwardness of very young people in America, that I was quite prepared to find a commendably opposite state of things in England, and I must say that, generally speaking, I was not disappointed. The extent to which young ladies and gentlemen under twenty-two can sit up straight and refrain from conversation here, impressed me as much as anything I have seen in society. I have not observed any of this shyness in married ladies or older gentlemen; and that struck me oddly, too, for in America it is only with advancing years that we become conscious of our manners. I have no doubt that, if the Eights had been in America--where they would probably be called the Octoplets--and Mr. Sanders Horton had been a Harvard Sophomore, and Lord Symonds's father had made his fortune out of a patent shoe-lace-tag, and we had all been enjoying ourselves over there, we might have noticed a difference both in the appearance and the behaviour of these young gentlemen. They would certainly have been older for their years, and more elaborately dressed. Their complexions would probably not have been so fresh, nor their shoulders so broad, and the pencilling on Mr. Horton's upper lip, and the delicate, fair marking on Lord Symonds's, would assuredly have deepened into a moustache. Their manners would not have been so negatively good as they were in Oxford, where they struck me as expressing an ideal, above all things, to avoid doing those things which they ought not to do. Their politeness would have been more effusive, and not the least bit nervous; though I hope neither Mr. Horton nor Lord Symonds will mind my implying that in Oxford they were nervous. People can't possibly help the way they have been brought up, and to me our host's nervousness was interesting, like his English accent, and the scout and the quad. Personally, I liked the feeling of superinducing bashfulness in two nice boys like those--it was novel and amusing--though I have no doubt they were much more afraid of Lady Torquilin than of me. I never saw a boy, however, from twelve to twenty-three--which strikes me as the span of boyhood in England--that was not Lady Torquilin's attached slave after twenty minutes' conversation with her. She did not humour them, or flatter them, or talk to them upon their particular subjects; she was simply what they called 'jolly' to them, and their appreciation was always prompt and lively. Lady Torquilin got on splendidly with both Mr. Sanders Horton and Lord Symonds. The only reason why Mr. Horton's lunch was not an unqualifiedly brilliant success was that, whenever she talked to one of our hosts, the other one was left for me to talk to, which was usually distressing for both of us.