Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/89

 *mering on an anvil. As you walk along, the earth sounds hollow to the tread, and every little while there is a cave-in, and a new hot spring or geyser appears I have spoken several times, in a good-natured way, of the difference in American and English pronunciation. A change may not be expected; indeed, I think the difference is becoming greater all the time, since the English children have a worse pronunciation than their parents. We have been traveling several days with a father and mother and two young daughters. The father and mother pronounce their words almost as we do, but both the daughters have a brogue that is the most pronounced I have heard. I hope I have written good-naturedly of the differences in pronunciation, for I like the people I meet. Most of the travelers are New-Zealanders or Australians, but I can't tell them from the English, except that the New-Zealanders and Australians frequently criticise the English to me. They say, for one thing, that young Englishmen who have nothing to do, come over here, and set a bad example; that here, young people are expected to work, and are not much respected unless they do. Many New-Zealanders have told me that they have too many holidays; too many amusements I hear exactly the same talk here of high taxes and public extravagance that I hear at home, and I am told that politicians are about as mischievous, active and troublesome in New Zealand as elsewhere. At home, we hear a great deal about the value of the single-tax system. New Zealand has that system, and today I heard a Wellington lawyer criticising it very severely. It is a single tax in theory only, since New Zealand has