Publisher's Synopsis
It was the sixth day of Mr. Direck's first visit to England, and he was at his acutest perception ofdifferences. He found England in every way gratifying and satisfactory, and more of a contrast withthings American than he had ever dared to hope.He had promised himself this visit for many years, but being of a sunny rather than energetictemperament-though he firmly believed himself to be a reservoir of clear-sighted Americanenergy-he had allowed all sorts of things, and more particularly the uncertainties of Miss MamieNelson, to keep him back. But now there were no more uncertainties about Miss Mamie Nelson, and Mr. Direck had come over to England just to convince himself and everybody else that therewere other interests in life for him than Mamie....And also, he wanted to see the old country from which his maternal grandmother had sprung.Wasn't there even now in his bedroom in New York a water-colour of Market Saffron church, where the dear old lady had been confirmed? And generally he wanted to see Europe. As aninteresting side show to the excursion he hoped, in his capacity of the rather underworked andrather over-salaried secretary of the Massachusetts Society for the Study of Contemporary Thought, to discuss certain agreeable possibilities with Mr. Britling, who lived at Matching's Easy.Mr. Direck was a type of man not uncommon in America. He was very much after the fashion ofthat clean and pleasant-looking person one sees in the advertisements in American magazines, thatagreeable person who smiles and says, "Good, it's the Fizgig Brand," or "Yes, it's a Wilkins, andthat's the Best," or "My shirt-front never rucks; it's a Chesson." But now he was saying, still with thesame firm smile, "Good. It's English." He was pleased by every unlikeness to things American, byevery item he could hail as characteristic; in the train to London he had laughed aloud with pleasureat the chequer-board of little fields upon the hills of Cheshire, he had chuckled to find himself in acompartment without a corridor; he had tipped the polite yet kindly guard magnificently, afterdoubting for a moment whether he ought to tip him at all, and he had gone about his hotel inLondon saying "Lordy! Lordy! My word!" in a kind of ecstasy, verifying the delightful absence oftelephone, of steam-heat, of any dependent bathroom. At breakfast the waiter (out of Dickens itseemed) had refused to know what "cereals" were, and had given him his egg in a china egg-cupsuch as you see in the pictures in Punch. The Thames, when he sallied out to see it, had been toogood to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had ever seen, and he had had to restrain himselffrom affecting a marked accent and accosting some passer-by with the question, "Say! But is thislittle wet ditch here the Historical River Thame
