If you do smoke something, beware—­oh, beware!—­of the native English cigar.  When rolled between the fingers it gives off a dry, rustling sound similar to a shuck mattress.  For smoking purposes it is also open to the same criticisms that a shuck mattress is.  The flames smolder in the walls and then burst through in unexpected places, and the smoke sucks up the airshaft and mushrooms on your top floor; then the deadly back draft comes and the fatal firedamp, and when the firemen arrive you are a ruined tenement.  Except the German, the French, the Belgian, the Austrian and the Italian cigar, the English cigar is the worst cigar I ever saw.  I did not go to Spain; they tell me, though, the Spanish cigar has the high qualifications of badness.  Spanish cigars are not really cigars at all, I hear; they fall into the classification of defective flues.

Likewise beware of the alleged American cocktail occasionally dispensed, with an air of pride and accomplished triumph, by the British barmaid of an American bar.  If for purposes of experiment and research you feel that you must take one, order with it, instead of the customary olive or cherry, a nice boiled vegetable marrow.  The advantage to be derived from this is that the vegetable marrow takes away the taste of anything else and does not have any taste of its own.

In the eating line the Englishman depends on the staples.  He sticks to the old standbys.  What was good enough for his fathers is good enough for him—­in some cases almost too good.  Monotony of victuals does not distress him.  He likes his food to be humdrum; the humdrummer the better.

Speaking with regard to the whole country, I am sure we have better beef uniformly in America than in England; but there is at least one restaurant on the Strand where the roast beef is just a little bit superior to any other roast beef on earth.  English mutton is incomparable, too, and English breakfast bacon is a joy forever.  But it never seems to occur to an Englishman to vary his diet.  I submit samples of the daily menu: 

Luncheon dinner
Roast Beef Boiled Mutton
Boiled Mutton Roast Beef
Potatoes, Boiled Cabbage, Boiled
Cabbage, Boiled Potatoes, Boiled
Jam Tart Custard
Custard Jam Tart
Cheese Coffee
Coffee Cheese

                        tea!

I know now why an Englishman dresses for dinner—­it enables him to distinguish dinner from lunch.

His regular desserts are worthy of a line.  The jam tart is a death-mask that went wrong and in coiisequence became morose and heavy of spirit, and the custard is a soft-boiled egg which started out in life to be a soft-boiled egg and at the last moment—­when it was too late—­changed its mind and tried to be something else.