On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by two
ladies, and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who was
very anxious to get on faster than he was able to do,--though why any
one should desire to go fast in Europe I do not know. One easily
falls into the habit of the country, to take things easily, to go
when the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's self
beforehand about times and connections. But the American was in a
fever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night. I
knew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in
the cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myself
that Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I happened, on
the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord "blow up" his
glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stiffer
bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.

"Didn't you know they were Americans?" asks the irate father. "I
knew it at once."

"No," replies young hopeful: "they didn't say GUESS once."

And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, with
his butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and the
intensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will. The
English are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than the
Swiss, and twice as obsequious. But to return to our American. He
had all the railway timetables that he could procure; and he was
busily studying them, with the design of "getting on." I heard him
say to his companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a
mass of hotel-bills and timetables. He confided to me afterward,
that his wife and her friend had got it into their heads that they