"I understand that London is the second greatest hop-consuming,
the fourth hog-killing, and the first egg-absorbing centre in the
world."

But what I deplore still more, and I think with reason, is the total
omission of the familiar interrogation: "What is your impression of
our women?"

That's where the reporter over on our side hits the nail every time.
That is the point at which we always nudge him in the ribs and buy him
a cigar, and at which youth and age join in a sly jest together. Here
again the sub-heading comes in so nicely: THINKS YOUNGSTOWN WOMEN
CHARMING. And they are. They are, everywhere. But I hate to think that
I had to keep my impression of London women unused in my pocket while
a young man asked me whether I thought modern literature owed more to
observation and less to inspiration than some other kind of
literature.

Now that's exactly the kind of question, the last one, that the
London reporters seem to harp on. They seemed hipped about literature;
and their questions are too difficult. One asked me whether the
American drama was structurally inferior to the French. I don't
call that fair. I told him I didn't know; that I used to know the
answer to it when I was at college, but that I had forgotten it,
and that, anyway, I am too well off now to need to remember it.

That question is only one of a long list that they asked me about art
and literature. I missed nearly all of them, except one as to whether
I thought Al Jolson or Frank Tinney was the higher artist, and even