I am considered Cold and Mad.

In your own house you can, of course, open the windows, and thus defeat the foreign stove.  The rest of the street thinks you mad, but then the Englishman is considered by all foreigners to be always mad.  It is his privilege to be mad.  The street thinks no worse of you than it did before, and you can breathe in comfort.  But in the railway carriage they don’t allow you to be mad.  In Europe, unless you are prepared to draw at sight upon the other passengers, throw the conductor out of the window, and take the train in by yourself, it is useless arguing the question of fresh air.  The rule abroad is that if any one man objects to the window being open, the window remains closed.  He does not quarrel with you: he rings the bell, and points out to the conductor that the temperature of the carriage has sunk to little more than ninety degrees, Fahrenheit.  He thinks a window must be open.

The conductor is generally an old soldier: he understands being shot, he understands being thrown out of window, but not the laws of sanitation.  If, as I have explained, you shoot him, or throw him out on the permanent way, that convinces him.  He leaves you to discuss the matter with the second conductor, who, by your action, has now, of course, become the first conductor.  As there are generally half a dozen of these conductors scattered about the train, the process of educating them becomes monotonous.  You generally end by submitting to the law.

Unless you happen to be an American woman.  Never did my heart go out more gladly to America as a nation than one spring day travelling from Berne to Vevey.  We had been sitting for an hour in an atmosphere that would have rendered a Dante disinclined to notice things.  Dante, after ten minutes in that atmosphere, would have lost all interest in the show.  He would not have asked questions.  He would have whispered to Virgil:

“Get me out of this, old man, there’s a good fellow!”