Departure in England from certain established pronunciations has another effect.
"Of course," said one of my friends, "one knows where to place anybody who says 'girl'" (pronouncing it as it is spelled).
"That's frightful," said I, "because I say 'girl'." "Oh, but you are an American.

It doesn't apply." But had I been English, it would have been something like coming to dinner without your collar.
That is why I think that, had my friend in the train begun his question about the buildings by saying that he was an American, the answer would have been different.

Not all the English yet, but many more than there were fifty or even twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their rules to us.
About 1874 a friend of mine from New York was taken to a London Club.
Into the room where he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out a cigar, felt for and found no matches, looked about, and there was a silence.

My friend thereupon produced matches, struck one, and offered it to the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted his cigar, and presently went away.
Then an Englishman observed to my friend: "It's not the thing for a commoner to offer a light to the Prince." "I'm not a commoner, I'm an American," said my friend with perfect good nature.
Whatever their rule may be to-day about the Prince and matches, as to us they have come to accept my friend's pertinent distinction: they don't expect us to keep or even to know their own set of rules.
Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more allowances for us than we for them.

They don't criticize Americans for not being English.
Americans still constantly do criticize the English for not being Americans.