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"I was curious what sort of pictures appealed to the ordinary visitor-'The biggest ones, of course,' was the attendant's reply. I found Rosa Bonheur's 'Horse Fair' a great drawing card"

but in battalions. Then came the heavysaddled and rugged, many-bridled and stirruped horse, apparently ridden by a youth from Mexico, in reality Mr. from

Broadway. Then dashed past a charming young lady in Georgian riding costume, a few delightful girls in broad-crowned hats, -moving with ease and grace, followed at a short distance by a nondescript gentleman one discovered in time to be a groom. One hardly had time to wonder why the American Smart Set does not sport the smart English style of groom, when there whirled past a lady or two without any grooms at all. To see one in particular riding astride on a well-bred gray, dart round a corner out of sight, and to note that she is the most celebrated lady athlete in America, is to realize that, after all, customs in countries vary.

I was just in time to see the Easter parade in Fifth Avenue. As one of the papers said, "Fashion sheds its winter chrysalis for radiant garb." The American woman on all such occasions eclipses the American man-with the exception of old men. The old men of American society strike the stranger as grand old men-but in vain does the stranger look for the grand old ladies. Where are they? In other words, when will

American ladies admit that they are not always young. To judge by their attire. they, as public attractions, toe the line with their youngest and fairest daughters.

By the way, mentioning toeing the line brings me to the point of the American fashion in boots and shoes, and I shudder. Nothing ever invented in the name of St. Crispin has ever approached in ugliness the modern American footgear with its goosebill toe. American girls are noted for their neat footwear, their slender ankles and small feet, but it would seem as if bootmakers in the States had combined to destroy the symmetry of their fair patrons' feet by a hideous ill-fashioned block heel, in place of the Louis heel which has reigned so long and which is just as safe and infinitely more presentable. But this is a digression. I must return to the Easter parade if only to say one thing I feel I must say of those few who lead the fashion and of the millions who are led by the few. Nothing is further from my wish than to be hypercritical, particularly in touching upon the charms of American women. At the same time, I must be sincere, and although I give the palm to the really young lady of America, at that awkward period known in English slang as the "flapper age"-the

bringing up. The American child of one day is the young lady of the next, with all the "chic" and all the assurance of her elders, but alas! her "ma" in place of moving one up in the ordinary course of nature, moves backward and assumes the manners, dress and customs of her own children. On the other hand the English matron dresses for the part, is resigned to her fate of being on the shelf. An American woman, whatever her age may be, must always be in the window.

The period of young ladyship preceding the "flapper age" is one in which the English child shines to advantage. She is dressed better, carries herself better, and as an artist, I must admit, is better formed. The young American miss resembles her French sister more than she does her robust English cousin, and she dresses like her, too, assuming a quaint and old-fashioned style. Neither French nor American young girls' limbs are so well formed as the English.

Dear me, still harping on the American girl! Well, one cannot escape her. For instance,

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though this makes

transient age between girlhood and
womanhood, the spring of life, so
to speak, in the sapling age pre-
ceding it, and the autumn of
womanhood, English children
and English matrons, I ven-
ture to think, are the superior
of their American sisters.
As in nature in England
there is a long sunrise and

a longer dawn, a long spring

and a still longer autumn, but

in America a quicker change in nature,

so it is with the women. But while it

lasts this awkward age is tided over by young

American girls without the awkwardness so appar

ent in their English sisters. Much of this is due to their

"In spite of the

many changes in New York, a few old friends in bronze and wood are still common objects of the sidewalks, notably that surpassive work of art, the statue to Horace Greeley, I saw years ago"

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my third visit to the States, I have not hitherto had occasion to penetrate the mystery of American dentistry. It is generally admitted that dentistry here is more scientific than in the old country. I was prepared for the science, but what I was not prepared for was the attendant or assistant, or whatever term I should use for the dentist's help the universal "boy," I suppose, though the assistant happens to be a charming young lady-I now understand why American dentistry is popular. It is also clever,

"One of the pleasantest and most noticeable improvements apparent to the stranger in New York is that friend and philosopher-the policeman"

The My. Working firl

The working girl is a drudge, a slave, but she manages to appear as smart and as winning as any society girl. How she can do so fascinates me, and leaves me puzzled and sad"

for I defy the greatest coward in the operating chair to show any funk while gazed at by a placid, pretty girl at his elbow.

On previous visits two peculiarities struck me in the New York streets. The number of dentists' advertisements, and the number of chiropodists. The dentists have increased, and, I suppose thanks to the street improvements, chiropodists are fewer.

In spite of the many changes in New York, a few old friends in bronze and wood are still common objects of the sidewalks,

notably that surpassive work of art, the statue to Horace Greeley, which I sketched when I was first here, many years ago; and the Indian chief outside the store-still offering the same bundle of wooden cigars. That fish-like design-the merman and the mermaid, erected in honor of Giovanni Verrazzano, appropriately opposite to the Aquarium, is new to me. Another new feature I have made a pilgrimage to, and one New York may well be proud of, is the Metropolitan Art Museum. It contains so many old friends, pictures I have known, painted by artists I have known, that I felt quite at home in the handsome and richly endowed galleries. I was, too, curious what sort of pictures appealed to the ordinary visitor "The biggest ones, of course," was the attendant's reply. I found Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" a great drawing card and Meissonier's miniature masterpieces neglected.

The places for the people's amusement and instruction are capital in New York, but the same cannot be said of private enterprise. The New Yorker is so anxious to make money, that so long as it makes no difference how shabby his parlor may be to the fly who walks into it, he is content to laugh at appearances. This might have. been said of New York as a whole in days gone by, but now with its palatial offices and public buildings, its gorgeous hotels and its palatial clubs, not to mention its railway depots, it is a very dazzling parlor indeed New York invites us into. But incongruity being one of Jonathan's characteristics, we find that the very buildings which every other country makes the most attractive, New York, and I may add other cities in America I have visited, allow to remain apparently neglected and unattractive, the theaters. The exteriors of the New York theaters would be a disgrace to a third-rate provincial town in England, and the same may be said of the inside accommodation. Now in the cities in other countries there is springing up a great rival to the theater, the cinematograph palaces, and, mark me, they are palaces in London and elsewhere. Clean, attractive, imporClean, attractive, important, as important and as attractive as the best class theaters. In New York this class of entertainment is of a low, cheap, unattractive type, mixed up with the cheapest vaudeville. New York must wake up in this respect; it is at present a deplorable

The motion pic

contrast to other cities. ture has come to stay. It appeals elsewhere to the refined and cultured, and fortunes are spent in preparing the better class pictures, but until New York raises proper motion picture theaters-and the prices of admission-it must remain indifferent to an art that other countries have placed on altogether a higher standard.

It is not the trusts in America, but the general mistrust that concerns and horrifies the visitors to the free country. New York is one great cash register. The stranger is a rich coin; shot into it at the customs slot, he is depleted of much value and dropped into a hotel, jerked up and down, and further reduced. When he passes into the stores, the theaters, the restaurants and railways, and eventually when the taxi demands his life and his money to take him to his ship's side, he is not worth a cent.

Strangers in any country take their impressions largely from the hotels. In former years the impression of America gathered from the hotel system was not a good one. To pay a fixed sum per day, to have one's meals at fixed hours, and at no other, to have all the dishes served at once, consisting of quantity rather than quality, and as a consequence of an overcooked mix-up, to acquire indigestion, did not suit the visitor of ease and pleasure. Yet it was typical of the country and it was cheap. Now the European plan is pretty generalalmost universal-but it is European only in name, for the object of English and Continental hotels is to study the comfort and ease of the visitor; in America it is to use the visitor for the profit and comfort of the proprietor. proprietor. Every hotel is a reflex of the country-it is a cash register, the visitor is shot into it, and ticked off and numbered, and checked and checked and "cash,"

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cash,"-" cash"-is recorded at every turn. Every mouthful, every movement is "recorded." Every demand is "cash,"-you are simply run through a machine and the only thing the proprietors think of is what sum is recorded under your number. You are fined if-for comfort's sake-you want your cocktail where you happen to be in the hotel. In the bar it is, say, fifteen cents; at the other side of the wall-in the restaurant -the same drink is twenty cents; in the lounge, through the next wall, it is twentyfive cents; and if you happen to be in your own sitting-room, it is fifty cents.

At breakfast, or indeed at any meal, there is nothing on the table until your order is run through a registering system downstairs. When you sit down to breakfast the inevitable glass of iced water is placed before you, which you can gaze at for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. You are then brought your breakfast, and three or four little rolls and a couple of squares of butter. You can then break your fast.

A breakfast in a London hotel is there before you sit down. The table is well furnished with bread, and rolls, and milk, and butter, and condiments, and knives and forks and spoons ad libitum. There is plenty of everything and nothing to "check." In Europe, hotels are run for the comfort of the visitor and huge profits are made without the aggressive show of redtape inseparable from everything American.

I asked a well-known millionaire if his great wealth gave him any particular pleasure. "Well," he replied, "I guess I can afford to be robbed without the fact troubling myself or my friends.” When we find a hotel boss of equal mind, then the American hotels may boast of being the best in the world.

Another millionaire friend of mine, when asked the same question, replied that he found the only advantage was that he never drank more than one glass of champagne and could afford to leave the rest. That was in London-I doubt that he would have made such a rash assertion in New York. He might just as well have said he could have found pleasure in calling a New York taxi to take him only three blocks awayfor champagne and taxicabs are by far the most expensive luxuries in New York.

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a model for the world, and New York has copied the model to good effect.

Another feature of New York to strike the stranger is not new,-the condition of the streets. The landmarks of the city are holes in the thoroughfares. I took my daughter to one I nearly fell into when I first visited New York, twenty-five years ago. The street refuse and the dust bins, the orange and banana skins and a thousand other things one sniffs or stumbles over or swears at in the New York streets, really makes one imagine at times that one is in Paris, particularly when gracefully picking her way through these obstacles is the smart, well-dressed, well-shod girl, who resembles her Parisian sister.

It is inevitable that the stranger when he has a pencil or pen in his hand should hark back to the American girl. From the storedrudge to the millionaire's daughter, the American girl is the prototype of the Parisian, with one exception; the Parisian does not wear herself out. If she is a workingwoman, the American girl wears herself out in order to live; if she is a society girl, she lives in order to wear herself out. The workingwoman in America is seveneighths of the nation's nerve power. She is ambitious, and filling places in other countries occupied by men, she means to stick there. She thus is the right hand of the "boss," and oh, how that poor hand is driven! She is a drudge, a slave, but she manages to appear as smart and as winning as any society girl. How she can do so fascinates me, and leaves me puzzled and sad. The plucky girl's face is a mask. Wash the carmine off those pretty lips and the rouge off those shapely cheeks, and the belladonna out of those bright eyes. Take off your false hair and the tight corset and those high heels, and-no-"you will do nothing of the kind?"-you will play the

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'American girls are noted for their neat footwear, their slender ankles and small feet, but it would seem as if bootmakers in the States had combined to destroy the symmetry of their fair patrons' feet by a hideous ill-fashioned block heel"

part of the bright, happy, capable business girl. Do so, my child, you may deceive your young man and your boss, and you may deceive yourself but you will never de

ceive your sympathizer-the artist.

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