STUMBLING ON LOCAL COLOR.

STUMBLING ON LOCAL COLOR. In A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, Yorick finds a major difference between France and England in how a French barber talks about the strength of a buckle on a wig. The barber says that the buckle would withstand being immersed in the ocean. Yorick muses that “the utmost stretch” of an English barber’s ideas would have “gone no further than to have ‘dipped it into a pail of water.’” Yorick concludes, “I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of national characters more in these nonsensical minutiae, than in the most important matters of state;…”