Daily press. [volume] (Newport News, Va.) 1896-current, 1898-02-06
SEEN IN ENGLAND.
LITTLE THINGS AN AMERICAN NO.
TICES ON HIS FIRST VISIT.

The Words Beside d DoorbeIl-The Scar
city of Ice Women In Earrooms.
Sweets Not Up to Our Candy-Mys
FERROUS Sign In Cardiff.
The books that are written about foreign
countries are most unsatisfactory. This is
just as true in tho case of such an easy
country to write about as England as it is
in the case of central Africa. The bsoks
tell the poor Americans who nave not been
there a good deal about Westminster abbey
md the Tower of London and the houses
of parliament, out they do not disclose the
little things in which English life differs
from American life, the little things
which, after all, make up life, the things
which an American on his first English
visit finds almost as divcrting and surpris-
ing as palaces and cnthedrals and galleries.
The very first experience of the present
writer and % wise companion of his in
London was of this sort. They got into a
Cub at the station and gave the cabmun
the address Of the house where they were
to stay. When they were set down at the
door, they saw beside it q bell handle and
beside it the words, ''Ring also" No such
words as these had they evor seen on a
door before, and they stopped and studied
them, while the cabInan wondered what
they were waiting for. What could this
strange request to ring also mean? Did
1t mean, king thou also, others having
rung,' or did it mean, "Oh, thou who
hast done something else, ring also?" And
If SO, what else? Then the companion,
wise in the Socratic method. remem bered.
In a pretty little edition Of Thackeray's,
The Rose and the Ring" he had once
seen a picture of a door with a knocker
and a bell and the words, "Knock and
ring" This door had o knocker, too, and
hing also" must be a shorter way of say
Ing, and ring" He knocked with
the knocker and rang with the bell, and
that proved TO be the right thing to do.
There is quito as much strangeness in
the things that are missed as in the things
that are seen. Probably the most terrible
attliction for Americans in England is the
want of leo. 1t takes time to learn to
drink warm water, II the silly and I'M
English American will insist on drinking
water at all. and it is just as bad to drink
warm beer. Perhaps it is in part the hor-
rible tepidness of the alleged cold drinks
that drives the English themselves to
drink SO much tea and so much spirits.
Ice is not wholly unknown. Now and
then a barroom has it for luxurious Gus
toners who demand it, and in that case
WIZ AcSe ! . h'iiio0ISCo " al dIlGZeu DODu-
lace by q placard with the word "Ice'' i in
the front window. Some hotels nave it,
too. and guard it as o treasure, handing it
around in dishes of the size of sugar basins.
Nor is tho Englishman himself, when
properly educated, blind to its usefulness.
The barmaid is another of the surprises
Tor the American. He knew that she ex-
listed, of course, yet it is a shock to see her
for the first time. 1t is q shock, too, at
first to see women customers standing or
sitting about in barrooms, even in som
paratively respectable ones. But this did
not set out to be an essay on barrooms or
drinking habits. 1t is hard to keep away
from the one or the other in England.
To make q long jump, there is the mat
ter OF candy, or "sweets," as they would
call themselves over there. Many English
women who make short visits to the
United States go home with palc faces and
jaded constitutions because of tho too sud.
den revelation to them Of American can.
dies. a girl who likes sweets-that is to
say a girl-should accustom herself to
the American GRADES from childhood to