of something that is about to be served sous cloche.  Caparisoned in strange garments, he stalks through France or Italy with an umbrella under his arm, his nose being buried so deeply in his guidebook that he has no time to waste upon the scenery or the people; while some ten paces in the rear, his wife staggers along in his wake with her skirts dragging in the dust and her arms pulled half out of their sockets by the weight of the heavy bundles and bags she is bearing.  This person, when traveling, always takes his wife and much baggage with him.  Or, rather, he takes his wife and she takes the baggage which, by Continental standards, is regarded as an equal division of burdens.

However, for variety and individual peculiarity, our own land offers the largest assortment in the tourist line, this perhaps being due to the fact that Americans do more traveling than any other race.  I think that in our ramblings we must have encountered pretty nearly all the known species of tourists, ranging from sane and sensible persons who had come to Europe to see and to learn and to study, clear on down through various ramifications to those who had left their homes and firesides to be uncomfortable and unhappy in far lands merely because somebody told them they ought to travel abroad.  They were in Europe for the reason that so many people run to a fire:  not because they care particularly for a fire but because so many others are running to it.  I would that I had the time, and you, kind reader, the patience so that I might enumerate and describe in full detail all the varieties and sub-varieties of our race that we saw—­the pert, overfed, overpampered children, the aggressive, self-sufficient, prematurely bored young girls, the money-fattened, boastful vulgarians, scattering coin by the handful, intent only on making a show and not realizing that they themselves were the show; the coltish, pimply youths who thought in order to be high-spirited they must also be impolite and noisy.  Youth will be served, but why, I ask you—­why must it so often be served raw?  For contrasts to such as these, we met plenty of people worth meeting and worth knowing—­fine, attractive, well-bred American men and women, having a decent regard for themselves and for other folks, too.  Indeed this sort largely predominated.  But there isn’t space for making a classified list.  The one-volume chronicler must content himself with picking out a few particularly striking types.

I remember, with vivid distinctness, two individuals, one an elderly gentleman from somewhere in the Middle West and the other, an old lady who plainly hailed from the South.  We met the old gentleman in Paris, and the old lady some weeks later in Naples.  Though the weather was moderately warm in Paris that week he wore red woolen wristlets down over his hands; and he wore also celluloid cuffs, which rattled musically, with very large moss agate buttons in them; and for ornamentation his watch chain bore a flat watch key,