The Morning News

QUEER THINGS IN ENGLAND.

Little Matters That Bewilder an American on His First Visit.

From the New York Tribune.

The books that are written about foreign countries are most unsatisfactory. This is just as true in the case of such an easy country to write about as England as it is in the case of Central Africa. The books tell the poor Americans who have not been there a good deal about Westminster Abbey and the tower of London and the houses of parliament, but they do not disclose the little things in which English life differs from American life, the little things which, after all, make up life, the things which an American, on his first English visit, finds almost as diverting and surprising as palaces and cathedrals and galleries. Jacob Abbott had something of the right plan when he wrote the ten volumes of "Rollo's Tour in Europe," and made them so delightful to the children of thirty years ago. He told about Westminster Abbey, but he told about hansom cabs, too, and they were quite unknown in America in those days, and most interesting.

It is these little differences that go far to make the first journey in England a round of amusement, if the traveler is in good health and has a youthful interest in all that he sees. Sometimes the things that are surprises at first are really only the steps in the Socratic method, and the keen observer finds that he knew them before, from books of pictures; only he did not believe them.

The very first experience of the present writer and a wise companion of his in London was of this sort. They got into the cab at the station and gave the cabman the address of the house where they were to stay. When they were set down at the door they saw beside it a bell handle and beside it the words, "Ring also." No such words as these had they ever seen on a door before, and they stopped and studied them, while the cabman wondered what they were waiting for. What could this strange request "ring also" mean? Did it mean, "Ring thou also, others having rung," or did it mean, "Oh, thou who has done something else ring also?" And if so, what else? Then the companion, wise in the Socratic method, remembered. In a pretty little edition of Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring," he had once seen a picture of a door with a knocker and a bell and the words, "Knock and ring." This door had a knocker, too, and "ring also" must be a shorter way of saying, "Knock and ring." He knocked with the knocker and rang with the bell, and that proved to be the right thing to do.

There is quite as much strangeness in the things that are missed as in the things that are seen. Probably the most terrible affliction for Americans in England is the want of ice. It takes time to learn to drink warm water, if the silly and un-English American will insist on drinking water at all, and it is just as bad to drink warm beer. Perhaps it is in part the horrible tepidness of the alleged cold drinks that drives the English themselves to drink so much tea and so much spirits.

On account of some climatic differences it is possible to drink a good deal more alcohol in England and in Europe generally than in America, with the same or less effect, but that is another subject.

Ice is not wholly unknown. Now and then a barroom has it for luxurious customers who demand it, and in that case the fact is announced to an amazed populace by a placard with the word "Ice" in the front window. Some hotels have it, too, and guard it as a treasure, handing it around in dishes of the size of sugar basins. Nor is the Englishman himself, when properly educated, blind to its usefulness. A man who looked like the sort that would pride himself on knowing all the latest things was recently ordering a lemon squash. A lemon squash is a weak soda lemonade, usually without ice. "Will you have ice in it?" the barmaid asked. "Yes," said the Englishman, "the ice is the best part of it." This he said with quite an air of announcing a discovery.

This simple incident proves several things, namely, that they do sometimes have ice; that they do not put it into a cold drink as a matter of course; that an Englishman who has discovered ice feels that he has a right to be proud of himself; and that English bars are tended by women. The barmaid is another of the surprises for the American. He knew that she existed, of course, yet it is a shock to see her for the first time. It is a shock, too, at first, to see women customers standing or sitting about in barrooms, even in comparatively respectable ones. But this did not set out to be an essay on barrooms or drinking habits; it is hard to keep away from the one or the other in England.

To make a long jump, there is the matter of candy, or "sweets," as they would call themselves over there. Many Englishwomen who make short visits to these United States go home with pale faces and jaded constitutions because of the too sudden revelation to them of American candies. A girl who likes sweets—that is to say, a girl—should accustom herself to the American grades from childhood, to avoid the temptation to get drunk on them at a later period. But up to a short time ago—and probably it is so still—there was only one shop in all London that could supply candies of the quality to be found at forty shops in New York. This shop was making a fortune in candy, and was also doing a land-office business in ice-cream soda, and yet such is the conservatism of the Briton, it ran for years without an imitator. Full credit was given to its origin, and it was known as the American candy shop.

There are confectioners' shops, of course, but these are chiefly devoted to cakes and pastry—windows full of tartlets, with strawberries in them cooked and sugared to look like gleaming rubies of the size of English walnuts—and they sell some kinds of candies, too. And there are little shops for the sale of taffy—British "toffy"—and horrid red and yellow poisons for the children who like their sugar to be of brilliant dyes. But good, wholesome (comparatively), artistic and ingenious American candies have never been thoroughly introduced.

Englishmen seem much given to shaving themselves, as it appears to the American in search of a barber shop. And he is stricken with a new sense of wonder when he finds a barber's shop called a toilet club. Sometimes American barber shops are advertised, and then he can commit his fate to one and take his chances.

The things that are advertised as American are sometimes diverting, too. American dentists are expected to announce themselves as such all over the world, of course, as the title is necessary as an assurance that the operators know some part of their business. That delusion, the "American bar," with its unheard-of mixed drinks, the very names of them enough to make an American laugh at his grandmother's funeral, are fairly common. American sewing machines would be expected to hold a higher place than the English, and to be so advertised, and they are. Then there are American organs. But an explanation is still sought and would be gratefully received of the meaning of the following sign, which was observed in the flourishing city of Cardiff, in Wales: "Gentlemen's clothing cleaned by the American process, without injury to the fabric."

And the funniest part of it all is the expression of mingled amusement and pity that an Englishman puts on when he is told that anything in any other country is not exactly as it is in England.