"Everywhere you see the signs of shopkeepers who promise to do a lot of things for you '_while you wait_.' The tailor will press your coat, the hatter will block your hat, the shoemaker will mend your shoe,--_while you wait_. At the barber shops the spectacle becomes irresistibly comic. The American throws himself back in an arm-chair to be shaved, while another artist cuts his hair; at the same time his two feet are stretched out to a bootblack, and his two hands are given up to a manicure.... "If 'Step lively' is the first exclamation that a foreigner hears on leaving the steamship, 'Quick' is the second. Everything here is quick. In the business quarter you read in the windows of the restaurants, as their only guarantee of culinary excellence, this alluring promise: 'Quick lunch!'... "The American is born 'quick'; works 'quick'; eats 'quick'; decides 'quick'; gets rich 'quick'; and dies 'quick.' I will add that he is buried 'quick.' Funerals cross the city _au triple galop_." So far as it relates to the appearance of things, what the philosopher would call the phenomenal world, this is a good, though slightly exaggerated, description. I have never been so fortunate as to see a man getting a "shave" and a "hair-cut" at the same moment; and it seems a little difficult to understand precisely how these two operations could be performed simultaneously, unless the man wore a wig. But if it can be done, no doubt the Americans will learn to have it done that way. As for the hair-cutter, the manicure, and the bootblack, the combination of their services is already an accomplished fact, made possible by the kindness of nature in placing the head, the hands, and the feet at a convenient distance from one another. Even the Parisian barbers have taken advantage of this fact. They sell you a bottle of hair tonic at the same time. It is true that the American moves rapidly. But if you should infer from these surface indications that he is always in a hurry, you would make a mistake. His fundamental philosophy is that you must be quick sometimes if you do not wish to be hurried always. You must condense, you must eliminate, you must save time on the little things in order that you may have more time for the larger things. He systematizes his correspondence, the labour of his office, all the details of his business, not for the sake of system, but for the sake of getting through with his work.