Here, for instance, are some extracts taken from a book written by A. W. Rutherford, of New Zealand, on Europe. I quote them from a review which appeared in an Australian review, “The Bookfellow.” Mr. Rutherford, says the reviewer, was disappointed with Paris; “the streets are not equal to those of any of our cities; the respectable restaurants are mean, shabby affairs; the swell restaurants are the haunts of gilded vice and supported by vice; the Seine, like the Thames within its city boundary, is just a dirty ditch--neither of them to be compared with the Waikato. Most Parisians look dowdy. Our Maoris could teach the French a lesson in politeness. Meat is not safe in France.... Much of the wine is vile; no colonial could possibly drink it; the cheap wines of France are deadly rubbish.” Of the tombs in Westminster Abbey he says they are dirty, untidy, inartistic; “some of them look like great cooking ranges.” He is disappointed in Venice, but he gives a clear reason for his disappointment in the gondola. “I had imagined the latter a frivolous, giddy thing, gaily painted, and the gondoliers clothed as in the play of that name. The gondoliers are just plain sailormen, in their work-a-day clothes.” That explains everything. Everything, as I said about Naples, depends on what you expect, on your standard. If you expect a gondola to be gilded and giddy and it turns out to be black, you are disappointed. If you expect the Seine and the Thames to be vast rivers, outside their cities and not in them, you are disappointed. What such authors never seem to bother about is whether their standard is likely to be indorsed by the rest of the human race or not. Their standard may be an excellent one for some things. The things which everybody else in the world would acknowledge to be good. For instance, in this case, the manners of the Maoris. The Maoris are the most courteous and chivalrous race in the world. But if they can teach manners to the French, there are many people in the colonies who would benefit by a lesson from them also. Another thing which the author of this book does not seem to realize is that there are many people who prefer a gondolier should look like a sailor, which he is, than like a singer in operetta. They prefer him to be dressed in his ordinary work-a-day clothes. They think it not only more appropriate to his task, but more picturesque. They think a man who is dressed in the clothes which befit his profession will look more dignified than a man who is dressed up as for a pageant.