When they have tried it the other way round.

On the Continent they have gone deliberately to work, one would imagine, to reverse matters.  Abroad woman is always where man ought to be, and man where most ladies would prefer to meet with women.  The ladies garde-robe is superintended by a superannuated sergeant of artillery.  When I want to curl my moustache, say, I have to make application to a superb golden-haired creature, who stands by and watches me with an interested smile.  I would be much happier waited on by the superannuated sergeant, and my wife tells me she could very well spare him.  But it is the law of the land.  I remember the first time I travelled with my daughter on the Continent.  In the morning I was awakened by a piercing scream from her room.  I struggled into my pyjamas, and rushed to her assistance.  I could not see her.  I could see nothing but a muscular-looking man in a blue blouse with a can of hot water in one hand and a pair of boots in the other.  He appeared to be equally bewildered with myself at the sight of the empty bed.  From a cupboard in the corner came a wail of distress:

“Oh, do send that horrid man away.  What’s he doing in my room?”

I explained to her afterwards that the chambermaid abroad is always an active and willing young man.  The foreign girl fills in her time bricklaying and grooming down the horses.  It is a young and charming lady who serves you when you enter the tobacconist’s.  She doesn’t understand tobacco, is unsympathetic; with Mr. Frederic Harrison, regards smoking as a degrading and unclean habit; cannot see, herself, any difference between shag and Mayblossom, seeing that they are both the same price; thinks you fussy.  The corset shop is run by a most presentable young man in a Vandyck beard.  The wife runs the restaurant; the man does the cooking, and yet the woman has not reached freedom from bother.