BY GEORGE ADE TORONTO THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LIMITED 1906 Copyright, 1906, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, October, 1906 Copyright, 1906, by George Ade Many of the letters appearing in this volume were printed in a syndicate of newspapers in the early months of 1906. With these letters have been incorporated extracts from letters written to the Chicago Record in 1895 and 1898. For the use of the letters which first appeared in the Chicago Record, acknowledgment is due Mr. Victor

GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE It may be set down as a safe proposition that every man is a bewildered maverick when he wanders out of his own little bailiwick. Did you ever see a stock broker on a stock farm, or a cow puncher at the Waldorf? A man may be a large duck in his private puddle, but when he strikes deep and strange waters he forgets how to swim. Take some captain of industry who resides in a large city of the Middle West. At home he is unquestionably IT. Everyone knows

A month before sailing I visited the floating skyscraper which was to bear us away. It was hitched to a dock in Hoboken, and it reminded me of a St. Bernard dog tied by a silken thread. It was the biggest skiff afloat, with an observatory on the roof and covered porches running all the way around. It was a very large boat. After inspecting the boat and approving of it, I selected a room with southern exposure. Later on, when we sailed, the noble craft backed into the river and turned round befor

We did not expect to have Mr. Peasley with us in London. He planned to hurry on to Paris, but he has been waiting here for his trunk to catch up with him. The story of the trunk will come later. As we steamed into Plymouth Harbour on a damp and overcast Sabbath morning, Mr. Peasley stood on the topmost deck and gave encouraging information to a man from central Illinois who was on his first trip abroad. Mr. Peasley had been over for six weeks in 1895, and that gave him license to do the "old tra

One good thing about London is that, in spite of its enormous size, you are there when you arrive. Take Chicago, by way of contrast. If you arrive in Chicago along about the middle of the afternoon you may be at the station by night. The stranger heading into Chicago looks out of the window at a country station and sees a policeman standing on the platform. Beyond is a sign indicating that the wagon road winding away toward the sunset is 287th street, or thereabouts. "We are now in Chicago," say

Advice to those following along behind. Stock up on heavy flannels and do not bother about a passport. Before we became old and hardened travellers we were led to believe that any American who appeared at a frontier without a passport would be hurried to a dungeon or else marched in the snow all the way to Siberia. When I first visited the eastern hemisphere (I do love to recall the fact that I have been over here before), our little company of travellers prepared for European experiences by rea

A man is always justly proud of the information which has just come to hand. He enjoys a new piece of knowledge just as a child enjoys a new Christmas toy. It seems impossible for him to keep his hands off of it. He wants to carry it around and show it to his friends, just as a child wants to race through the neighbourhood and display his new toy. Within a week the toy may be thrown aside, having become too familiar and commonplace, and by the same rule of human weakness the man will toss his pr

They were all waiting for us—there at the corner, where the Avenue de l'Opera hooks on to the string of boulevards. They have been waiting for years without starving to death, so it is possible that once in a while some misguided American really employs one of them. They call themselves guides, but they are tramps—shabby genteel tramps, oiled and cheaply perfumed, full of shamefaced gayety, speaking wretched English. They come out of doorways at you, and in grovelling whispers beg of you to come

A good many people do not understand the method of French courts of law. Take the Dreyfus case, for instance. It has been dragging along for years, and the more evidence accumulated by Captain Dreyfus to prove his innocence, the greater seems to be his portion of woe. He has been vindicated over and over again and the vindications simply make him more unpopular with those who prefer to regard him as a mysterious and melodramatic villain. People living at home have never understood why Captain Dr

In undertaking a trip to foreign parts I have had two objects in view:— (a) To strengthen and more closely cement our friendly relations with foreign Powers—I to furnish the cement. (b) To reform things in general over here. I found that there was no opening for a real reformer in the U.S.A., inasmuch as the magazines were upsetting municipal rings, cornering the Beef Trust, and camping on the trail of every corporation that seemed to be making money. I said:—"If I wish to make a ten strike as a

In Naples—and Mr. Peasley is still with us. Mr. Peasley is still with us We waited for him in London until he recovered his lost trunk, and he was so grateful that he decided to go along with us. He said that he was foot-loose and without any definite plans and it always made him feel more at home to travel with people who were just as green and as much scared as he was. A week ago we were in London—sloshing about in the damp and dismal mixture of mud and snow which lined the dark thoroughfares.

"It's a small world." This is one of the overworked phrases of the globe-trotter. It is used most frequently by those who follow the beaten paths. In other words, we find it difficult to get away from our acquaintances. Not that we wish to get away from them; on the contrary, when we are stumbling along some unfamiliar thoroughfare six thousand miles from home and bump into a man with whom we have a nodding acquaintance in Chicago, we fall upon his neck and call him brother. It must be very anno

Mr. Peasley is a secretive student of the guide book. He reads up beforehand and on the quiet. Then when we come face to face with some "sight" and are wondering about this or that, Mr. Peasley opens the floodgate of his newly-acquired knowledge and deluges the whole party. He is seldom correct, and never accurate, but he knows that he is dealing with an ignorance more profound than his own, and that gives him confidence. For instance, the first afternoon in Cairo we chartered an open conveyance

During the first three days in Cairo a brilliant and original plan of action had been outlining itself in my mind. At last I could not keep it to myself any longer, so I told Mr. Peasley. "Do you know what I am going to do?" I asked. Mr. Peasley did not. "I am going to write up the Pyramids. I am going to tell who built them and how long it took and how many blocks of stone they contain. I shall have myself photographed sitting on a camel and holding an American flag. Also, I shall describe in d

The dream of many years has come true. We are moving (southward) up the Nile. Like busy sand flies we are flitting, almost daily, across white patches of desert to burrow into second-hand tombs and crick our necks looking up at mutilated temples. Ten years ago not one of us had ever heard of Koti or Khnemhotep. Now we refer to them in the most casual way, as if we had roomed with them for a while. It is certainly a gay life we are leading over the cemetery circuit. Just think what rollicking fun

While we were in London we dined one evening at a gorgeous hotel with a Mr. Brewster, of Connecticut. After dinner, Mr. Peasley told the waiter to bring some "good cigars." Mr. Peasley resides in Iowa, where it is customary to stroll down to the drug store after supper and buy a couple of Lottie Lees, which are so good that the druggist cannot afford to give six for a quarter. Not being familiar with the favourite brands of London, he called on Mr. Brewster to name the cigar of his choice, and M

Egyptian civilisation is supposed to be stationary, except in the larger cities. The fellahin scratch the rich alluvial soil with the same kind of clumsy wooden plough that was used when Marc Antony came down from Rome on a business trip and got all snarled up with Cleopatra. They live in the same type of snug mud hut—about the size of a lower berth. They lift the water from the Nile by exactly the same wooden sweep that was in vogue when Cheops began work on the Pyramids. It may be remarked, en

Until we arrived at Luxor we did not know the total meaning of the word "old." The ruins, which are the stock in trade of this ancient City of Thebes, date so far back into the dimness of Nowhere that all the other antiquities of earth seem as fresh and recent as a morning newspaper. "Old" is merely a relative term, after all. I remember in my native town we small boys used to gaze in reverent awe at a court house that was actually built before the Civil War. We would look up at that weather-bea

Taken by themselves, as mere mouldering chunks of antiquity that have been preserved to us because they happened to be dropped down in a dry climate, the fragmentary remains of old Egypt are not very inspiring. They were big, but seldom beautiful. As records proving that humanity—old-fashioned, unreliable humanity, with its fears, jealousies, hatreds, and aching ambitions—is just about the same as it was five thousand years ago, the temples and the decorated tombs seem to bring us direct and hea

One morning we rode across the Nile from Luxor in a broad and buxom sailboat, climbed on our donkeys, and rode to the west. We followed the narrow road through the fresh fields of wheat and alfalfa until we struck the desert, and then we took to a dusty trail which leads to a winding valley, where the kings of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth dynasties are being dug up. This narrow valley, with the steep hills rising on either side, is the sure-enough utterness of desolation; not a tree

On the morning of our hurried pack up and get away from Luxor we lost Mr. Peasley. It was a half-hour before the sailing of the boat, and we were attempting to lock trunks, call in the porters, give directions as to forwarding mail, and tip everybody except the proprietor all at the same time. This excruciating crisis comes with every departure. The fear of missing the boat, the lurking suspicion that several articles have been left in lower drawers or under the sofa, the dread of overlooking so