English clothes are not meant for Americans, but for Englishmen to wear:  that is a great cardinal truth which Americans would do well to ponder.  Possibly you have heard that an Englishman’s clothes fit him with an air.  They do so; they fit him with a lot of air around the collar and a great deal of air adjacent to the waistband and through the slack of the trousers; frequently they fit him with such an air that he is entirely surrounded by space, as in the case of a vacuum bottle.  Once there was a Briton whose overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew by that he was no true Briton, but an impostor—­and they put him out of the union.  In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for an American to wear is the kind Americans make.

I knew these things in advance—­or, anyway, I should have known them; nevertheless I felt our trip abroad would not be complete unless I brought back some London clothes.  I took a look at the shop-windows and decided to pass up the ready-made things.  The coat shirt; the shaped sock; the collar that will fit the neckband of a shirt, and other common American commodities, seemed to be practically unknown in London.

The English dress shirt has such a dinky little bosom on it that by rights you cannot refer to it as a bosom at all; it comes nearer to being what women used to call a guimpe.  Every show-window where I halted was jammed to the gunwales with thick, fuzzy, woolen articles and inflammatory plaid waistcoats, and articles in crash for tropical wear—­even through the glass you could note each individual crash with distinctness.  The London shopkeeper adheres steadfastly to this arrangement.  Into his window he puts everything he has in his shop except the customer.  The customer is in the rear, with all avenues of escape expertly fenced off from him by the proprietor and the clerks; but the stock itself is in the show-window.

There are just two department stores in London where, according to the American viewpoint, the windows are attractively dressed.  One of these stores is owned by an American, and the other, I believe, is managed by an American.  In Paris there are many shops that are veritable jewel-boxes for beauty and taste; but these are the small specialty shops, very expensive and highly perfumed.

The Paris department stores are worse jumbles even than the English department stores.  When there is a special sale under way the bargain counters are rigged up on the sidewalks.  There, in the open air, buyer and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle and quarrel, and kiss and make up again—­for all the world to see.  One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a heap of marked-down lingerie; picking out things for the female members of his household to wear—­now testing some material with his tongue; now holding a most personal article up in the sunlight to examine