The American flag is the most wonderful emblem in the whole world, and ours is the most glorious country too, but that does not mean that it is good taste to wave our flag for no reason whatever.  At a parade or on an especial day when other people are waving flags, then let us wave ours by all means—­but not otherwise.  It does not dignify our flag to make it an object of ridicule to others, and that is exactly the result of the ceaseless flaunting of it by a group of people who talk at the top of their voices, who deliberately assume that the atmosphere belongs to them, and who behave like noisy, untrained savages trying to “show off.”  In hotels, on excursions, steamers and trains, they insist on talking to everyone, whether everyone wants to talk or not.  They are “all over the place”—­there is no other way to express it—­and they allow privacy to no one if they can help it.

Numberless cultivated Americans traveling in Europe never by any chance speak English or carry English books on railroad trains, as a protection against the other type of American who allows no one to travel in the same compartment and escape conversation.  The only way to avoid unwelcome importunities is literally to take refuge in assuming another nationality.

Strangely enough, these irrepressibles are seldom encountered at home; they seem to develop on the steamer and burst into full bloom only on the beaten tourist trails—­which is a pity, because if they only developed at home instead, we might be intensely annoyed but at least we should not be mortified before our own citizens about other fellow-citizens.  But to a sensitive American it is far from pleasant to have the country he loves represented by a tableful of vulgarians noisily attracting the attention of a whole dining-room, and to have a European say mockingly, “Ah, and those are your compatriots?”

Some years ago, a Russian grand duke sitting next to Mrs. Oldname at a luncheon in a Monte Carlo restaurant, said to her: 

“Your country puzzles me!  How can it be possible that it holds without explosion such antagonistic types as the many charming Americans we are constantly meeting, and at the same time—­” looking at a group who were actually singing and beating time on their glasses with knives and forks—­“those!”

A French officer’s comment to an American officer with whom he was talking in a club in Paris, quite unconsciously tells the same tale: 

“You are liaison officer, I suppose, with the Americans?  But may I be permitted to ask why you wear their uniform?”

The other smiled:  “I am an American!”

“You an American?  Impossible!  Why, you speak French like a Parisian, you have the manner of a great gentleman!” (un grand seigneur,) which would indicate that the average American does not speak perfect French nor have beautiful manners.  There is much excuse for not speaking foreign languages, but there is no excuse whatever for having offensive manners and riding rough-shod over people who own the land—­not we, who seem to think we do.