in engaging accents. After a little while they arose and strolled
back to the hotel. The Englishmen, as they passed our table, stared
hard at two young girls who were of our party, stared as deliberately
and with as much freedom as if the children had been on a London
music-hall stage. The Englishwomen passed us as though we had been
invisible. They had so completely the air of seeing nothing in our
chairs that I felt myself a phantom, a ghost like Banquo's, with no
guilty eye to discern my presence at the table. Lastly came the
Austrian, who had paused to speak to a servant, and, as _she_ passed,
she gave us a fleeting smile and a slight bow, the mere shadow of
a curtsey, acknowledging our presence as human beings, to whom some
measure of recognition was due.

It was such a little thing, so lightly done, so eloquent of perfect
self-possession, and the impression it made upon six admiring
Americans was a permanent one. We fell to asking ourselves--being
honestly conscious of constraint--how each one of us would have
behaved in the Austrian lady's place, whether or not that act of
simple and sincere politeness would have been just as easy for us.
Then I called to mind one summer morning in New England, when I sat
on a friend's piazza, waiting idly for the arrival of the Sunday
papers. A decent-looking man, with a pretty and over-dressed girl
by his side, drove up the avenue, tossed the packet of papers at our
feet, and drove away again. He had not said even a bare "Good
morning." My kind and courteous host had offered no word of greeting.
The girl had turned her head to stare at me, but had not spoken. Struck
by the ungraciousness of the whole episode, I asked, "Is he a stranger
in these parts?"

"No," said my friend. "He has brought the Sunday papers all summer.