generosity this young bandit would insist on sharing his discovery of an artist with his companions, whose shouts could be heard up the street. Their classes were over for the day, and the children were full of that pent-up deviltry which every artist has observed as belonging particularly to that bad quarter of an hour just after the close of school.

If they did not play tag about the painter and trip over the legs of his easel, they would perhaps crowd around and beg for un petit sou. His recent stay in Etaples, where the young are trained from the cradle to annoy artists, had led him to do the children of Montreuil what he later decided was a grave injustice.

But even after arriving at a more charitable opinion, he was never quite able to subscribe to the enthusiastic sentiments of Sterne, who, as he was leaving Montreuil, found that before entering his chaise at the inn door he had yet a little matter to compound with the "sons and daughters of poverty," and exclaimed, "Just Heaven! for what wise reason hast thou ordered it that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other countries, should find a way to be at unity in this?" Deciding that the moment was inauspicious for that particular sketch, the painter did not wait for his enemy to scale the ramparts, but continued on his way with rapid strides, reflecting on what new bloodthirsty additions he might make to the great picture which he intended to paint of the "Massacre of the Innocents."

In the rapid kaleidoscope of fancy, he saw himself opening the "Figaro" to see his picture used as a frontispiece; and still again he pictured himself in the Salon, elbowing his way into the crowd in front of his picture, and glancing casually at the card "Acquis par l'Etat," while his ears were flattered by a chorus of exclamations:

"Magnifique!" "Epatant!" "Quelle facture!"

This agreeable train of thought had driven away the irritation of the minute

before, but it was destined to be rudely interrupted, for in this moment he heard the pit-pat of his small pursuer's feet and a shrill voice crying, "M'sieu! M'sieu! Maman wants to know how much you will charge for mending this umbrella."

This was really too much! To have an old umbrella thrust into his hand just as his fingers were about to close on the rosette of the Legion of Honor!

"Mend your old umbrella?" he fairly shouted. "You tell your mother that-" but his invective ended with a burst of laughter; for his eye had fallen upon his painting-kit, and he realized that it was the awkward bundle composed of his easel, camp-stool, and sketching-umbrella, that had caused him to be mistaken for an itinerant umbrella-mender.

The boy, all flushed and breathless from his run, stood watching the remarkable and eccentric conduct of the supposed umbrella-mender with wonder not unmixed with apprehension, and the painter suddenly felt a wave of compunction.

"What's your name, young man?" he queried. He spoke in his most ingratiating manner, as though that were the one thing in the world he longed most to learn; but any bachelor would have detected the sham at once, and branded the remark as the old familiar Exhibit A of those who find difficulty in beginning conversation with strange children. "How old are you?" would follow as Exhibit B; and of course for extraordinary emergencies one more question-"Where do you go to school?" was held in reserve.

"Jean," said the boy in reply to Exhibit A.

"Jean what?" inquired the painter, eagerly seizing the opportunity to save Exhibit B for a time of greater need.

"Jean Valjean Vasseur," he answered, adding with the implicit belief and naïveté of childhood, "I'm named after Jean Valjean. He used to be mayor."

THE painter had found in Montreuil one family that appreciated Victor Hugo.

LXXXVII-4

IN re-reading the first and by far the N re-reading the first and by far the edy of childhood, "Helen's Babies," I note once more that you call a place a "store" when we should call it a "shop." Ours is much the more vulgar phrase. You can put into a poem "The peasant's simple store." You cannot put into a poem, "The peasant's simple shop." Not even if you are Mr. Masefield. But I mention this for quite a different purpose.

You know it is always said that America and England are chiefly united by the tie of language. You also know that this is a great mistake. England is united to the continent of America by exactly the same ties which unite her to the continent of Europe. The continent of Europe is inhabited by Latins, Germans, Jews, Slavs, Scandinavians, and Celts. The continent of America is also inhabited by Latins, Germans, Jews, Slavs, Scandinavians, and Celts. America does not in the least belong to England; I thought the military operations round Saratoga had settled that in comparatively recent times. But America does belong to Europe, because the Italians and the Irish and the Jews and the Scotch crofters come from Europe, and could not have come from anywhere else. We English are tied to America by those very real bonds which tie us to Russia. What they are is very soon discovered when the Russian meets a Japanese in the East or when a Californian meets him in the West.

'But on the language I have long ceased to build much hope. My reason is that both the languages strike me as being languages. American is not bad English; it is good American. In that lovely lyric of which the refrain is, "O God! O Montreal," occurs, if I remember right, the couplet: "Thou callest trousers pants

whereas I call them trousers. Therefore thou art in Hell fire, and may the Lord pity thee." This seems to me a slightly narrow, nay, a nearly heretical, view of the judgment upon sin. The poet should have asked himself, in a spirit of Christian humility and self-examination, why he called them trousers and why his transatlantic cousin called them pants. If he had done so, he would, I think, have found the two words were really symbols of the souls of two nations. First, if he, as an Englishman, had asked himself why he used the word trousers, he would have found that he did not know. That is the first great fact about the living tradition and living literature of England. That is the first grand and solid advantage of living in a very historic and protected community. I do not know where the word "trousers" comes from. I should guess it came from the French trousser, and had something to do with what was called "trussing the points" of the old trunk-hose. But this is only a guess, and a guess which it would bore me beyond words to verify. I do not know or care where the word trousers came from. But here exactly is the division of the nations. The Americans do know where the word "pants" came from. Obviously, it came from pantaloons, and was quite deliberately shortened for quite practical purposes. If English words are mysterious, it is because they like to wander away from their original meaning; and are thus slowly changed. If American words are mysterious, it is because they go straight to their meaning, and are thus impatiently shortened. I think it was Charles V who said that fine thing, "Whenever I learn a new language, I feel as if I had a new soul." If he had had to learn American as well, to say nothing of Esperanto, he

might have had more souls than he could save. But the man who could make that remark would have known that there really is a soul of America.

It is not a mere jest drawn from the instance of pants and trousers. I could show the same thing in many other AngloAmerican differences of phrase. In the charming American domestic tales I read in my boyhood, the thing that we call a railway-station was always called a depot. Well, there is a great deal of national temperament in the two terms. An Englishman calls it a station because his instinct is to think of it as something stationary. He regards the village station as he does the village green or the village church, first, as an object in a local landscape; second, as an agreeable place where one has nothing to do. A railway train is a mere interruption in an English railway-station. But this illogicality and localism is not possible in the dry light and eager clearness of the American intelligence. The American calls it a depot because he realizes that the whole business is in its nature hurried and temporary; that it is a place where things and people are deposited for a short time. The American reserves his antiquarianism for things that are really antique; he keeps his veneration for things. that are really venerable. He does so with equal ease, whether the object of his respect be the lost classicism of the Parthenon or the almost equally lost classicism of the Bunker Hill Monument. But the English have a sort of appetite for making things old and comfortable as quickly as possible. We shall soon be encouraging ivy on our railway-stations, as we encourage it on our parish churches. In a very little while the London hansom-cab will be quite literally as romantic as the Venetian gondola.

But the strongest case is that difference between shop and store, which I have already mentioned. The American store may be as small as the smallest English shop. The English shop may be (and if certain modern trends continue, will be) as large as the largest American store. Nevertheless, the difference is national, that is, natural. The abstract and ideal shopkeeper is a small shopkeeper. The abstract and ideal storekeeper is the manager of something like Harrod's Stores. You can

have, as Napoleon said, a nation of shopkeepers. You cannot have a nation of storekeepers. They must of their nature tend to be the managers of most other men; that is, the managers of most of the nation. It is in this respect, and this respect only, that I think that the influence of your country upon mine has really been unfortunate.

I should really like to know how you feel about this; for I think you know I am above the mere prejudice of patriotism, or the worse prejudice of anti-patriotism, or, worst of all, the utterly blinded prejudice of the cosmopolitan. All the colors. are alike to the cosmopolitan. All colors always are alike to the man in the dark. And there is no darkness like that outer darkness, that heathen and homeless darkness, in which the cosmopolitan dwells. But, speaking as man to man, and therefore as nation to nation, don't you think there is something in my fear that your big businesses are providing us with the wrong model? And all the more because it is a working model.

We talk cheaply here of America as without ancient history. But, indeed, there is more really ancient history in America than in England, and that because the republic of the United States started its career with two of the oldest and simplest institutions on this earth, of both of which England had been ignorant for centuries. Of course I mean war and slavery.

We will toss away the topic of war. I will only ask you whether you do not notice in the big shops the return of the idea of slavery. Can you think of any real difference between the workmen and the slaves, except that the slaves were free? Already the employer is fining his workmen: on all rational grounds of comparison he may soon be flogging his workmen. The big businesses are becoming independent states, as in the Dark Ages. They are becoming despotic states, as in the Dark Ages. The one healthy and heroic civil war of modern times was fought in your country. fought in your country. Half a century ago you fought to resist the rise of an independent republic. Will you not fight to resist the rise of all these independent monarchies?