Chapter II. The powdered footman smiles.
Salemina is so English! I can't think how she manages. She had not
been an hour on British soil before she asked a servant to fetch in
some coals and mend the fire; she followed this Anglicism by a
request for a grilled chop, 'a grilled, chump chop, waiter, please,'
and so on from triumph to triumph. She now discourses of methylated
spirits as if she had never in her life heard of alcohol, and all
the English equivalents for Americanisms are ready for use on the
tip of her tongue. She says 'conserv't'ry' and 'observ't'ry'; she
calls the chambermaid 'Mairy,' which is infinitely softer, to be
sure, than the American 'Mary,' with its over-long a; she ejaculates
'Quite so!' in all the pauses of conversation, and talks of smoke-
rooms, and camisoles, and luggage-vans, and slip-bodies, and trams,
and mangling, and goffering. She also eats jam for breakfast as if
she had been reared on it, when every one knows that the average
American has to contract the jam habit by patient and continuous
practice.
This instantaneous assimilation of English customs does not seem to
be affectation on Salemina's part; nor will I wrong her by fancying
that she went through a course of training before she left Boston.
From the moment she landed you could see that her foot was on her
native heath.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27