More than half the guests in the Swiss hotels are Americans. The English complain—John is generally grumbling—that the Americans get the best rooms at the hotels, and that travelling on the continent is not half so agreeable. It was my misfortune to travel last week in the same compartment of the rail-car with an English clergyman and his wife [and, by the way, she called him _hubby_, for husband, whenever she spoke to him,—an appellation for the head of the house that was new to me, and not very agreeable]. He said he would write a letter to the _Times_,—that is an Englishman’s universal refuge when he thinks himself imposed upon in travel. “I sh_o_ll write to the _Times_ about this country, and I sh_o_ll say that the cookin’ is exceedin’ly mean, the scenery very dull, and the travellin’ decidedly uncomfortable.” But he was as near being a fool as a man could well be, and be at large. His tongue ran incessantly, and he talked so loud that no other conversation could be had, and everybody must listen to his twaddle and complaints. “The ’ills were too ’igh” for him to think of climbin’ any of them, and not “’igh” enough to interest him in lookin’ at them; and on the whole he thought Switzerland a failure. It is curious to observe how soon Americans are known to be such, anywhere in Europe. In England, a hotel waiter or a porter at a lodge or castle would know you to be an American, certainly the moment you spoke, and perhaps before. A woman said to me when I had said that I was an American, “You don’t speak like one.” When I pressed for an answer to the question, “What is the difference between my speech and others,” she replied, after much hesitation, “Why, I thought all your countrymen talked through the nose.” That educated Americans, and all of them accustomed to good society at home, speak the English language with as much propriety and purity as the most cultivated Englishmen, is certainly true, and it may safely be added that the masses of the people in America, born to the manner, speak it far better. Small as England is, the dialects of the provinces are so diverse, that one is often sorely puzzled to understand a commonplace remark or inquiry. It was very amusing, too, to perceive that many _slang_ phrases, or technical terms, that we had supposed to be of local origin and use in the United States, were as common in England as with us at home. “You’ll ’ave lots of time,” says the coachman. “I’ll pop out your luggage,” when he would tell us that it would be done instantly, said the conductor.