One day as we were seated in the shade of one of the boats several of the cads came along, and one of them remarked, talking through his nose, “Wall, stranger, I guess you don’t have such kind of weather in America!” My friend made no reply whatever, and the trio left us. I referred to his quiet way of treating these fellows. He said “I have found that the much better way is not to notice the disagreeables.” This hit me, but no matter. “If one was to notice every puppy that snips at his heels, he would have little time for anything else. It is the English nature to make themselves disagreeable to foreigners. Everywhere, all over the world, the same story is told of them, that they are always sneering at what does not belong to their country, their people and their set. They are born grumblers. They have a special dislike to Americans. Why, I do not understand. It is true that many Americans have peculiarities, but so have the English, and even more noticeable than those they ridicule in us. In fact there is not a man or woman living but could be ridiculed and caricatured, so as to appear not only amusing but offensive. Ridicule is a most dangerous weapon, and I have known the best of friendships severed by it. I regret the English use it as they do when they have so many weak places in their own character. “The English come to America and we receive them with the greatest cordiality, and try to make everything pleasant and comfortable for them as our guests. They take all that we do as a matter of course, a tribute of an inferior people to them as a superior nation. They will not admit that we have any manners, society, literature, art or science, or if they make any concession it is that the little we have got is borrowed, or as most of them plainly put it, stolen from them. They regard our kindness as presumption and officiousness, and resent it, some by ridicule and others by contempt.