know; but I doubt if the English live longer than we for living less
comfortably. The lower classes seem always to have colds; the middle
classes, rheumatism; and the upper, gout, by what one sees or hears.
Rheumatism one might almost say (or quite, if one did not mind what one
said) is universal in England, and all ranks of society have the
facilities for it in the in-doors cold in which they otherwise often
undeniably flourish. At the end, it is a question of whether you would
rather be warm and well, or cold and well; we choose the first course
and they choose the last.

If we leave this question apart, I think it will be the experience of
the careful observer that there is a summit of healthful looks in
England, which we do not touch in America, whatever the large table-land
or foot-hill average we reach; and in like manner there is an
exceptional distinction of presence as one encounters it, rarely enough,
in the London streets, which one never encounters with us. I am not
envying the one, or at least not regretting the other. Distinction is
the one thing for which I think humanity certainly pays too much; only,
in America, we pay too much for too many other things to take any great
comfort in our want of distinction. I own the truth without grief or
shame, while I enjoy the sight of distinction in England as I enjoy
other spectacles for which I cannot help letting the English pay too
much. I was not appreciably the poorer myself, perhaps I was actually
the richer, in seeing, one fine chill Sunday afternoon, in the
aristocratic region where I was taking my walk, the encounter of an
elderly gentleman and lady who bowed to each other on the pavement
before me, and then went and came their several ways. In him I saw that
his distinction was passive and resided largely in his drab spats, but
hers I beheld active, positive, as she marched my way with the tall cane
that helped her steps, herself tall in proportion, with a head, ashen