NOTEBOOK American. Not all Americans, but when an American does it he makes competition impossible. Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of dis- tinction and be the beginning of a monarchy. The Swiss seem to be at bottom good-hearted and they are courteous, though they exhibit no artificial polish; they are grave, not to say austere of countenance, inde- pendent, a trifle repellant in their manner; they have no vivacity, and if they know how to smile they keep that secret within themselves. They are furnished with ma- chinery to smile with but they have no way of operating it. These remarks fit all the Swiss I have met, excepting about a dozen. Notes for story—probably The Mysterious Stranger. He had but one term for that large body which has such a fine opinion of itself—"the little stinking human race, with its little stinking kings and popes and bishops and prostitutes and peddlers." He said: "The globe is a living creature, and the little stinking human race and the other animals are the vennin that infest it—the microbes. We dig into its skin to suck its blood (water) and we use its Niagaras and rivers for power. We sail its oceans in fleets which it is not conscious of and cannot see. We dig deep into the thin outer gold- leaf layer of its skin, 3000 feet, and it is not aware of it. Nothing hurts it but a bellyache, then it heaves with a trifling earthquake." The absence of the Orienting faculty. In Innsbruck the portier of the Tivolier Hotel told me to go to the right two 337