The “parlor car” in America is more luxurious than our first class, but you travel in it (if you have no “private” car) with thirty other people.

“What do you want to be private for?” asked an American, and you don’t know how to answer, for you find that with them that privacy means concealment.  For this reason, I believe, they don’t have hedges or walls round their estates and gardens.  “Why should we?  We have nothing to hide!”

In the cars, as in the rooms at one’s hotel, the “cuspidor” is always with you as a thing of beauty!  When I first went to America the “Ladies’ Entrance” to the hotel was really necessary, because the ordinary entrance was impassable!  Since then very severe laws against spitting in public places have been passed, and there is a great improvement.  But the habit, I suppose due to the dryness of the climate, or to the very strong cigars smoked, or to chronic catarrh, or to a feeling of independence—­“This is a free country and I can spit if I choose!”—­remains sufficiently disgusting to a stranger visiting the country.

The American voice is the one thing in the country that I find unbearable; yet the truly terrible variety only exists in one State, and is not widely distributed.  I suppose it is its very assertiveness that makes one forget the very sweet voices that also exist in America.  The Southern voice is very low in tone and soothing, like the “darkey” voice.  It is as different from Yankee as the Yorkshire burr is from the Cockney accent.

This question of accent is a very funny one.  I had not been in America long when a friend said to me: 

“We like your voice.  You have so little English accent!”

This struck me as rather cool.  Surely English should be spoken with an English accent, not with a French, German, or double-dutch one!  Then I found that what they meant by an English accent was an English affectation of speech—­a drawl with a tendency to “aw” and “ah” everything.  They thought that every one in England who did not miss out aspirates where they should be, and put them in where they should not be, talked of “the rivah,” “ma brothar,” and so on.  Their conclusion was, after all, quite as well founded as ours about their accent.  The American intonation, with its freedom from violent emphasis, is, I think, rather pretty when the quality of the voice is sweet.

Of course the Americans would have their jokes about Henry’s method of speech.  Ristori followed us once in New York, and a newspaper man said he was not sure whether she or Mr. Irving was the more difficult for an American to understand.

“He pronounces the English tongue as it is pronounced by no other man, woman or child,” wrote the critic, and proceeded to give a phonetically spelled version of Irving’s delivery of Shylock’s speech of Antonio.

    “Wa thane, ett no eperes
    Ah! um! yo ned m’clp
    Ough! ough!  Gaw too thane!  Ha! um! 
    Yo com’n say
    Ah!  Shilok, um! ouch! we wode hev moanies!”