The same kind of danger, of course, awaits the English traveller in America.  If he is an unwise traveller, he will note, for admiring or indignant quotation, many a thing which the wise traveller notes only with a query and the intention of finding out, if he can, what it means or why it is permitted.  The first questions, in fact, for the student of manners and laws are why a thing is permitted, encouraged, or practised; how the thing in consideration affects the people who practise it, and how they regard it.  Thus, to go back to ancient history, English people, forty years ago, could not understand how slavery was allowed to continue in the States.  We ourselves had virtuously given freedom to all our slaves; why should not the Americans?  We had not grown up under the institution, you see; we had little personal knowledge of the negro; we believed that, in spite of the discouraging examples in Hayti and in our own Jamaica, there was a splendid future for the black, if only he could be free and educated.  Again, none of our people realized, until the Civil War actually broke out, the enormous magnitude of the interests involved; we had read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ and our hearts glowed with virtuous indignation; we could not understand the enormous difficulties of the question.  Finally, we succeeded in enraging the South against us before the war began, because of our continual outcry against slavery; and in enraging the North after the war began, by reason of our totally unexpected Southern sympathies.  It is a curious history of wrongheadedness and ignorance.

This was a big thing.  The things which the English traveller in the States now notices are little things; as life is made up of little things, he is noting differences all day long, because everything that he sees is different.  Speech is different:  the manner of enunciating the words is different; it is clearer, slower, more grammatical; among the better sort it is more careful; it is even academical.  We English speak thickly, far back in the throat, the voice choked by beard and moustache, and we speak much more carelessly.  Then the way of living at the hotels is different; the rooms are much—­very much—­better furnished than would be found in towns of corresponding size in England—­e.g., at Providence, Rhode Island, which is not a large city, there is a hotel which is most beautifully furnished; and at Buffalo, which is a city half the size of Birmingham, the hotel is perhaps better furnished than any hotel in London.  An immense menu is placed before the visitor for breakfast and dinner.  There is an embarrassment of choice.  Perhaps it is insular prejudice which makes one prefer the simple menu, the limited choice, and the plain food of the English hotels.  At least, rightly or wrongly, the English hotels appear to the English traveller the more comfortable.  I return to the differences.  In the preparation and the serving of food there are differences—­the