It became understood that they were amusing and amazing.
Americans "came in" as the heroes and heroines of novels and stories.
Punch delighted in them vastly.

Shopkeepers and hotel proprietors stocked, furnished, and provisioned for them.

They spent money enormously and were singularly indifferent (at the outset) under imposition.

They "came over" in a manner as epoch-making, though less war-like than that of William the Conqueror.
International marriages ceased to be a novelty.

As Bettina Vanderpoel grew up, she grew up, so to speak, in the midst of them.