You may be dining, English reader, at, let us say, the Carlton or Savoy when a party of Americans comes into the room--Americans of the kind that every one knows for Americans as soon as he sees or hears them. The women are admirably dressed--perhaps a shade too admirably--and the costumes of the men irreproachable. But there is that something of manner, of walk, of voice which draws all eyes to them as they advance to their table, and the room is hushed as they arrange their seats. "Those horrid Americans!" says one of your party and no one protests. But at the next table to you there is seated another party of delightful people--low-voiced, well-mannered, excellently bred in every tone and movement. You wonder dimly if you have not met them somewhere. At all events you would very much like to meet them. They are infinitely more distressed than you at the behaviour of the American party which has just come in--because they are Americans also. And I may add that they will not be in the least flattered, if you should be lucky enough to meet them, by your telling them that you "never would have thought it." Perhaps, English reader, you have lived long enough in some other country than England to have learned what a loathsome thing the travelling Englishman often appears. Possibly you have been privileged to hear the frank and unofficial opinion of some native of that country--an opinion not intended for your ears, but addressed to a compatriot of the speaker--of English people in general, based upon his experience of those whom he has seen. Such an experience is quite illuminating. I know few things more offensive than the behaviour of a certain class of German when he is in Paris. The noisy, nasal American at the Carlton or Savoy is no more representative of America than the loud-voiced, check-suited Englishman at Delmonico's or the Waldorf-Astoria is the man by whom you wish your nation to be judged. It may be a purposeful provision of a higher Power that the people of all countries should appear unprepossessing when they are abroad, for the fostering in each nation of the spirit of patriotism; for why should any of us be patriots if all the foreigners who came to our shores were as inoffensive as ourselves? The truth is that those who are inoffensive pass unnoticed. It is the occasional caricature--the parody--of the national type that catches our eye; and on him we too often base our judgment of a whole people.