Some of you have seen an
omnibus in the distance, and have wondered what it was used for. To
suggest that you should travel in such a plebeian conveyance, is to
give you a shock that takes you two days to recover from. You
expect a private carriage, with a footman in livery, to take you
through the mountains. You, all of you, must have the most
expensive places in the theatre. The eight-mark and six-mark places
are every bit as good as the ten-mark seats, of which there are only
a very limited number; but you are grossly insulted if it is hinted
that you should sit in anything but the dearest chairs. If the
villagers would only be sensible and charge you ten marks for the
eight-mark places you would be happy; but they won't."
I must candidly confess that the English-speaking people one meets
with on the Continent are, taken as a whole, a most disagreeable
contingent. One hardly ever hears the English language spoken on
the Continent, without hearing grumbling and sneering.
The women are the most objectionable. Foreigners undoubtedly see
the very poorest specimens of the female kind we Anglo-Saxons have
to show. The average female English or American tourist is rude and
self-assertive, while, at the same time, ridiculously helpless and
awkward.
