Americans and Others
Mrs. Harvey-Browne, over what she considers the stupidities of German speech.
"What," she asks with asperity, "could be more supremely senseless than calling the Baltic the Ostsee?"
"Well, but why shouldn't they, if they want to?" says Elizabeth densely.
"But, dear Frau X, it is so foolish. East sea! Of what is it the east? One is always the east of something, but one doesn't talk about it. The name has no meaning whatever. Now 'Baltic' exactly describes it."
This is fiction, but it is fiction easily surpassed by fact,—witness the English tourist in France who said to Sir Leslie Stephen that it was "unnatural" for soldiers to dress in blue. Then, remembering certain British instances, he added hastily: "Except, indeed, for the Artillery, or the Blue Horse." "The English model," comments Sir Leslie, "with all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by nature."
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