In the caskets of memory I shall ever cherish the picture of a particularly hairy gentleman, apparently of Russian extraction, who patronized our hotel in Venice one evening.  He was what you might call a human hazard—­a golf-player would probably have thought of him in that connection.  He was eating flour dumplings, using his knife for a niblick all the way round; and he lost every other shot in a concealed bunker on the edge of the rough; and he could make more noise sucking his teeth than some people could make playing on a fife.

There is a popular belief to the effect that the Neapolitan eats his spaghetti by a deft process of wrapping thirty or forty inches round the tines of his fork and then lifting it inboard, an ell at a time.  This is not correct.  The true Neapolitan does not eat his spaghetti at all—­he inhales it.  He gathers up a loose strand and starts it down his throat.  He then respires from the diaphragm, and like a troupe of trained angleworms that entire mass of spaghetti uncoils itself, gets up off the plate and disappears inside him—­en masse, as it were—­and making him look like a man who is chinning himself over a set of bead portieres.  I fear we in America will never learn to siphon our spaghetti into us thus.  It takes a nation that has practiced deep breathing for centuries.

Chapter IX

The Deadly Poulet Routine

Under the head of European disillusionments I would rate, along with the vin ordinaire of the French vineyard and inkworks, the barmaid of Britain.  From what you have heard on this subject you confidently expect the British barmaid to be buxom, blond, blooming, billowy, buoyant—­but especially blond.  On the contrary she is generally brunette, frequently middle-aged, in appearance often fair-to-middling homely, and in manner nearly always abounding with a stiffness and hauteur that would do credit to a belted earl, if the belting had just taken place and the earl was still groggy from the effects of it.  Also, she has the notion of personal adornment that is common in more than one social stratum of women in England.  If she has a large, firm, solid mound of false hair overhanging her brow like an impending landslide, and at least three jingly bracelets on each wrist, she considers herself well dressed, no matter what else she may or may not be wearing.

Often this lady is found presiding over an American bar, which is an institution now commonly met with in all parts of London.  The American bar of London differs from the ordinary English bar of London in two respects, namely—­there is an American flag draped over the mirror, and it is a place where they sell all the English drinks and are just out of all the American ones.  If you ask for a Bronx the barmaid tells you they do not carry seafood in stock and advises you to apply at the fishmongers’—­second turning to the right, sir, and then over the way, sir—­just before you come to the bottom of the road, sir.  If you ask for a Mamie Taylor she gets it confused in her mind with a Sally Lunn and sends out for yeastcake and a cookbook; and while you are waiting she will give you a genuine Yankee drink, such as a brandy and soda—­or she will suggest that you smoke something and take a look at the evening paper.