uor" in my manner.

And at the end the boy who took me over at a quarter to two said, "The
old gentleman sank wearily upon a chair in the hotel lounge. His hair is
almost white."

The trouble is that I had not understood that London reporters are
supposed to look at a man's personal appearance. In America we never
bother with that. We simply describe him as a "dynamo." For some reason
or other it always pleases everybody to be called a "dynamo," and the
readers, at least with us, like to read about people who are "dynamos,"
and hardly care for anything else.

In the case of very old men we sometimes call them "battle-horses" or
"extinct volcanoes," but beyond these three classes we hardly venture
on description. So I was misled. I had expected that the reporter would
say: "As soon as Mr. Leacock came across the floor we felt we were in
the presence of a 'dynamo' (or an 'extinct battle-horse' as the case may
be)." Otherwise I would have kept up those energetic movements all the
morning. But they fatigue me, and I did not think them necessary. But I
let that pass.

The more serious trouble was the questions put to me by the reporters.
Over in our chief centres of population we use another set altogether.
I am thinking here especially of the kind of interview that I have
given out in Youngstown, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana, and Peterborough,
Ontario. In all these places--for example, in Youngstown, Ohio the
reporter asks as his first question, "What is your impression of
Youngstown?"

In London they don't. They seem indifferent to the fate of their city.
Perhaps it is only English pride. For all I know they may have been
burning to know this, just as the Youngstown, Ohio, people are, and
were too proud to ask. In any case I will insert here the answer I had
written out in my pocket-book (one copy for each paper--the way we do it
in Youngstown), and which read:

"London strikes me as emphatically a city with a future. Standing as
she does in the heart of a rich agricultural district with railroad
connection in all directions, and resting, as she must, on a bed of coal
and oil, I prophesy that she will one day be a great city."

The advantage of this is that it enables the reporter to get just the
right kind of heading: PROPHESIES BRIGHT FUTURE FOR LONDON. Had
that been used my name would have stood higher there than it does
to-day--unless the London people are very different from the people in
Youngstown, which I d