child is a recognised fact, it is perhaps well that it should be
turned into such unobjectionable channels.




VI

International Misapprehensions and National Differences


Some years ago I was visiting the cyclorama of Niagara Falls in London
and listening to the intelligent description of the scene given by the
"lecturer." In the course of this he pointed out Goat Island, the
wooded islet that parts the headlong waters of the Niagara like a
coulter and shears them into the separate falls of the American and
Canadian shores. Behind me stood an English lady who did not quite
catch what the lecturer said, and turned to her husband in surprise.
"Rhode Island? Well, I knew Rhode Island was one of the smallest
States, but I had no idea it was so small as that!" On another
occasion an Englishman, invited to smile at the idea of a
fellow-countryman that the Rocky Mountains flanked the west bank of
the Hudson, exclaimed: "How absurd! The Rocky Mountains must be at
least two hundred miles from the Hudson." Even so intelligent a
traveller and so friendly a critic as Miss Florence Marryat (Mrs.
Francis Lean), in her desire to do justice to the amplitude of the
American continent, gravely asserts that "Pennsylvania covers a tract
of land larger than England, France, Spain, and Germany all put
together," the real fact being that even the smallest of the countries
named is much larger than the State, while the combined area of the