ANGLICISED.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1467, 15 June 1912, Page 11

ANGLICISED.

It is becoming,increasingly difficult to distinguish male foreigners from ourselves (says an English writer). _ The women have always had each their distinctive and 'noticeable' charm, not in any way to be confounded with one another. A Frenchwoman remainc a Frenchwoman throughout tlie wildest vagaries of

fashion. She can never look , like anything else. An Alnerican is unmistakable. She walks swiftly, gracefully, neatly (the only. word to describe it), a daughter of the New World, self-confessed. And Russians, Germans, Italians, and the rest are.alike absolutely distinctive types. But the men are changing. Yesterday I was idly watching a little party of four, two men standing on the pavement chattering to a couple ot' women in a waiting motor-car. The women were English, and from across the street the two men appeared typical Englishmen. Their tlothes proclaimed the work of the best and most .expensive West End tailors, they woro English boots, and. most noticeable of all, their manner, their gestures, or the lack of them were wholly English. And yet, when the car moved off and they raised their hats I caught the sentences of farewell in quite unmistakable Parisian speech. A moment later they were having considerable difficulty in explaining to a taxicafc driver that they wished to drive to Grosvenor Square, their English and the man's knowledge of the French pronunciation of that name being quite unequal to the situation. The American changes nioro slowly, and you still meet him in his loose coats and trousers, walking with that peculiar gait which betrays his countrymen the world over. But he is coming under the general rule, and English tailors and English manner have marked him for their own, and in Bond Street (far more than in the huge hotels which owe their existence to his yearly pilgrimage to London) you lvear the carefully acquired English speech and see the restraint put upon the naturally restless hands and face.