Apparently we do not need to go abroad to find quaint and delightful samples of foreign English. I doubt if the English of Continental hotel-advertisementsⒶtextual note or Continental English local guide-books, or even the showy and wonderful English of the college-bred Babu of Calcutta, can surpass in charm and naïvetéⒶtextual note and felicity the following effort of a Hebrew tailor of our own city of New York. Mr. Paine came across it by accident, and gathered it in. It is a cheap and humble and rudely printed little circular:

I have been to Bermuda again; this is the fifth timeⒺexplanatory note; it was on account of bronchitis, my annual visitor for these seventeen or eighteen years. I have not come out of any previous attack so quickly or so pleasantly; the attack has always kept me in bed five weeks, sometimes six, and once eight. This time I got out of bed at the end of the first week, two days after a ten-inch snow-storm, and took the chances and went to sea in bitter winter weather. We made the passage in forty-five hours and landed in lovely summer weather. The passage itself came near to curing me, for a radical change is a good doctor. A single dayⒶtextual note of constant and delightful exposure to the Bermudian sun completed the cure; then I stayed eightⒶtextual note days longerⒺexplanatory note to enjoy the spiritual serenities and the bodily rejuvenationsⒶtextual note furnished by that happy little paradise. It grieves me, and I feel reproached, that I allowed the physicians to send Mrs. Clemens on a horrible ten-day sea journey to ItalyⒺexplanatory note when Bermuda was right here at hand and worth a hundred Italies, for her needs. They said she must have a warm and soft and gentle climate, and that nothing else could help her. The winter climate of Florence distinctly failed to meet the requirements; we had eight months of uncomfortable weather, with much chilliness, two months of rain, and very infrequent splashes of sunshine. She was not able to outlive these disasters, and she [begin page 202] was never able to flee from them, for lack of strength. It astonishes me and grieves me to remember that when Italy was proposed Bermuda never once occurred to me; yet I knew Florence well, and I knew Bermuda well, and was aware that for climate Florence was a sarcasm as compared with Bermuda.

I suppose we are all collectors, and I suppose eachⒶtextual note of us thinks that his fad is a more rational one than any of the others. Pierpont Morgan collects rare and precious works of art and pays millions per year for them; an old friend of mine, a Roman prince, collects and stores up in his palace in Rome every kind of strange and odd thing he can find in the several continents and archipelagoesⒶtextual note, and as a side issue—a pastime, and unimportant—has collected four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of postage-stamps. Other collectors collect rare books, at war prices, which they don’t read, and which they wouldn’t value if a page were lacking. Still other collectors collect menus; still others collect playbillsⒶtextual note; still others collect ancient andirons. As for me, I collect pets:Ⓐtextual note young girlsⒺexplanatory note—girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naïveⒶtextual note and innocent—dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears. My collection consists of gems of the first water.