as though its sire might have been a snare-drum and its dam a dark
lantern, and that it got its looks from its father and its heating
powers from the mother's side of the family. And the plumbing
fixtures were of the type that passed out of general use on the
American side of the water with the Rutherford B. Hayes administration.
I was given to understand that this was a fair sample of the
average residential London bathroom--though the newer apartment
houses that are going up have better ones, they told me.

In English country houses the dearth of bathing appliances must
be even more dearthful. I ran through the columns of the leading
English fashion journal and read the descriptions of the large
country places that were there offered for sale or lease. In many
instances the advertisements were accompanied by photographic
reproductions in half tone showing magnificent old places, with
Queen Anne fronts and Tudor towers and Elizabethan entails and
Georgian mortgages, and what not.

Seeing these views I could conjure up visions of rooks cawing in
the elms; of young curates in flat hats imbibing tea on green
lawns; of housekeepers named Meadows or Fleming, in rustling black
silk; of old Giles--fifty years, man and boy, on the place--wearing
a smock frock and leaning on a pitchfork, with a wisp of hay caught
in the tines, lamenting that the 'All 'asn't been the same, zur,
since the young marster was killed ridin' to 'ounds; and then
pensively wiping his eyes on a stray strand of the hay.

With no great stretch of the imagination I could picture a gouty,
morose old lord with a secret sorrow and a brandy breath; I could
picture a profligate heir going deeper and deeper in debt, but