[Greek text]. HERODOTUS.

I once had the good fortune to take down to dinner a young American lady
of some personal attractions. Her vivacity and shrewdness were racial;
her charm peculiar to herself. Her conversation consisted in a rather
fierce denunciation of Englishmen, young Oxford Englishmen in particular.
Their thoughts, their dress, their speech, their airs of superiority
offended one brought up with that Batavian type of humanity, the American
youth, to whom we have nothing exactly corresponding in this country
except among drawing-room conjurors. But I was startled at her keen
observation when I inquired with a smile how she knew I was not an Oxford
man myself.

'Had you been one, you would never have listened to what I have been
saying,' she retorted. Rather nettled, I challenged her to pick out from
the other guests those on whom she detected the brand of Isis. A pair of
gloves was the prize for each successful guess. She won seven; in fact
all the stakes during the course of the evening. Over one only she
hesitated, and when he mentioned that he had neither the curiosity nor
the energy to cross the Atlantic, she knew he came from Oxford.

Yes, there is something in that manner after all. It irritates others
besides Americans. Novelists try to describe it. We all know the hero
who talks English with a Balliol accent--that great creature who is
sometimes bow and sometimes cox of his boat on alternate evenings; who
puts the weight at the University Sports and conducts the lady home from
a College wine without a stain on her character; is rusticated for a year
or so; returns to win the Newdigate and leaves without taking a degree.
Or that other delightful abstraction--he has a Balliol accent too--with
literary tastes and artistic rooms, where gambling takes place. He is