I believe that I can tell you. He didn't know that my friend was an
American, he thought he was an Englishman who had broken the rules of the
game. We do have some rules here in America, only we have not nearly so
many, they're much more stretchable, and it's not all of us who have
learned them. But nevertheless a good many have.

Suppose you were traveling in a train here, and the man next you, whose
face you had never seen before, and with whom you had not yet exchanged a
syllable, said: "What's your pet name for your wife?"

Wouldn't your immediate inclination be to say, "What damned business is
that of yours?" or words to that general effect?

But again, you most naturally object, there was nothing personal in my
friend's question about the buildings. No; but that is not it. At the
bottom, both questions are an invasion of the same deep-seated thing--the
right to privacy. In America, what with the newspaper reporters and this
and that and the other, the territory of a man's privacy has been
lessened and lessened until very little of it remains; but most of us
still do draw the line somewhere; we may not all draw it at the same
place, but we do draw a line. The difference, then, between ourselves and
the English in this respect is simply, that with them the territory of a
man's privacy covers more ground, and different ground as well. An
Englishman doesn't expect strangers to ask him questions of a guide-book
sort. For all such questions his English system provides perfectly
definite persons to answer. If you want to know where the ticket office
is, or where to take your baggage, or what time the train goes, or what
platform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches or
other buildings of interest are to be seen in those towns, there are
porters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it's