JEROME K. JEROME ON AMERICA.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 197, 18 August 1909, Page 3

JEROME K. JEROME ON AMERICA.

.. There was a large and characteristic fathering at the luncheon of the ociety of American Women in London, held at the Hotel Cecil recently, under the presidency of Mrs Fairbanks. In a speech which touched lightly and humorously bin the mutual interests of English people and Americans, Mrs Fairbanks welcomed, the guests, and then asked Mr Jerome K. Jerome, who with^his wife was presitent at the gathering, to give some impressions of America gained during his visit there.

The result was a delightfully humorous speech, full of amusing criticisms of American ways and people as seen through English spectacles. ,

Mr Jerome said he thought the European man was much more unselfish than the American, because he gave woman the opportunity of cultivating her own immortal soul by the exercise of the virtues of patience, humility, endurance, and so_ on, whereas in America the man himself developed those graces and gave woman no chance of doing so. His most trying experience had been when a lady called him up by telephone at two o'clock in the morning for a "heart to heart talk."

In America everybody had to be young, and when he asked where the old people wei?e he was invited "to light a cigar and take a walk to the churchyard." As to the cooking of the country, he always wondered what became <of the European cooks who went to, the; States. The Americans were clever as a nation at contrivance, but incapable of comfort. In hotels you could ask for all sorts of wonderful things by instruments, but if you tried to order a carriage and pair, a boiled egg might be sent to you. The first thing an Englishman saw in America was the interviewer. Pie came on board at Sandy Hook and asked v the visitor at once what he thougnt of America. He told the first interviewer that he had not go there yet. The interviewer said: "What do you think you are going to think about America." He replied that he did not know; but the interviewer did, judging by the account that appeared in the papers. He did not know whether it could be suggested to 'the American interviewer that there was such a thing as an Englishman who did not drop his "h's" and who did not end every sentence with "don't you know." He found in the interviews with him that were published that he never used an "h" in the right place, and never came to a full stop witout the. observation, "Don't you know." ■' He mentioned this to one interviewer, and the interviewer replied: "Well, you have got to put a little character into these things. You English people don't spread yourselves on interviews, and we have got to put a little character into it." Then the American interviewer never seemed to think that there was a time for sleep. When he was in New York a man broke into his bedroom at two o'clock in the morning, and began talking to him. _In the paper he was reported as beingrather a surly type of Englishman. He was described in the report of one interview as a "tubby little man," and in another as "a blonde Viking." Both reports were written by the same man, who afterwards explained that

he wrote for two papers, and had tol vary it. The Press in America was an institution that struck one. It was always talking at the top of its voice j it was always screaming. The result was that when there was anything toscream about it seemed to have lost its voice. .

At Atlanta an interviewer came upon him when he was having a bath. He had not locked the ..door, so the interviewer walked in. He told him he would see him in a few minutes if he,would wait in the next room, but the interviewer said, "Oh! don't trouble yourself. You are enjoying yourself. It must be a treat to an Englishman to have a bath!"