life, with English characters. The Frenchmen of a French play become, as
a rule, Englishmen; so do Italians and Spaniards and Swedes. They
usually, however, continue to express foreign ideas and to act like
foreigners. In speaking of such a transplanted character, I may be
permitted to trifle with a sacred text:

The manager has said it,
But it's hardly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
For he ought to have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps I-tali-an!
But in spite of Art's temptations,
To belong to other nations,
He becomes an Englishman!

Luckily, the American characters of the 'Banker's Daughter', with one
exception, could be twisted into very fair Englishmen, with only a faint
suspicion of our Yankee accent. Mr. James Alberry, one of the most
brilliant men in England, author of the 'Two Roses,' was engaged to make
them as nearly English as he could. The friendship, cemented as Alberry
and I were discussing for some weeks the international social questions
involved, is among the dearest and tenderest friendships I have ever
made; and I learned more about the various minor differences of social
life in England and American while we were thus at work together than I
could have learned in a residence there of five years. I have time to
give you only a few of the points. Take the engagement of Lilian, broken
in act first. An engagement in England is necessarily a family matter,
and it could neither be made or broken by the mere fiat of a young girl,
without consultation with others, leaving the way open for the immediate