" From top to bottom
the column was studded thick with British thises and British thats.
Yet the editorial writers of that very paper are given to frequent
and sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting
proclivities of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to
spasmodic attacks on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps
what they say of us is true; but for unadulterated nastiness I
never saw anything in print to equal the front page of a so-called
sporting weekly that circulates freely in London, and I know of
nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition of a certain form
of vice that is to be witnessed nightly in the balconies of two
of London's largest music halls. It was upon the program of another
London theater that I came across the advertisement of a lady
styling herself "London's Woman Detective" and stating, in so many
words, that her specialties were "Divorce Shadowings" and "Secret
Inquiries." Maybe it is a fact that in certain of our states
marriage is not so much a contract as a ninety-day option, but the
lady detective who does divorce shadowing and advertises her
qualifications publicly has not opened up her shop among us.
In the campaign to give the stay-at-home Englishman a strange
conception of his American kinsman the press is ably assisted by
the stage. In London I went to see a comedy written by a deservedly
successful dramatist, and staged, I think, under his personal
direction.
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