ing of the anxious consideration beforehand of topics
of conversation, and modes of investigation! To stay in a new house crushes
me with fatigue--and even a little party like this, which seems, I daresay,
to some of you, a negligible, even a tedious thing, is to me rich in
far-flung experience."

"Mayn't we have the benefit of some of it?" said Rose.

"Yes," said Father Payne, "you may--you must, indeed! I am grateful to you
for introducing the subject--it is more graceful than if I had simply
divested myself of my impressions unsolicited."

"What was it all about?" said Rose.

"Why," said Father Payne, "the answer to that is simple enough--it was to
meet an American! I know that race! Who but an American would have heard of
our little experiment here, and not only wanted to know--they all do
that--but positively arranged to know? Yes, he was a hard-featured man--a
man of wealth, I imagine--from some place, the grotesque and extravagant
name of which I could not even accurately retain, in the State of
Minnesota."

"Did he want to try a similar experiment?" said Barthrop.

"He did not," said Father Payne. "I gathered that he had no such
intention--but he desired to investigate ours. He was full of compliments,
of information, even of rhetoric. I have seldom heard a simple case stated
more emphatically, or with such continuous emphasis. My mind simply reeled
before it. He pursued me as a harpooner might pursue a whale. He had the
whole thing out of me in no time. He interrogated me as a corkscrew
interrogates a cork. That consumed the whole of luncheon. I made a poor
show. My experiment, such as it is, stood none of the tests he applied to
it. It appeared to be lacking in all earnestness and zeal. I was painfully
conscious of my lack of earnestness. 'Well, sir,' he said at the conclusion
of my examination-in-chief, 'I seem to detect that this business of yours
is conducted mainly with a view to your own entertainment, and I admit that
it causes me considerable disappointment.' The fact is, my boys," said
Father Payne, surveying the table, "that we must be more conscious of
higher aims here, and we must put them on a more commercial footing!"

"But that was not all?" said Barthrop.

"No, it was not all," said Father Payne; "and, to tell you the truth, I was
more alarmed by than interested in the Minnesota merchant. I couldn't state
my case--I failed in that--and I very much doubt if I could have convinced
him that