ting,
and gave her my card, on the back of which I had written "_He
didn't_"--and I asked her to sign her name below those words.

She said: "He didn't? He didn't what?"

"Oh," I said, "never mind. We cannot stop to discuss that now. This is
urgent. Won't you please sign your name?" (I handed her a fountain-pen.)

"Why," she said, "I cannot commit myself in that way. Who is it that
didn't?--and what is it that he didn't?"

"Oh," I said, "time is flying, flying, flying. Won't you take me out of
my distress and sign your name to it? It's all right. I give you my word
it's all right."

She looked nonplussed; but hesitatingly and mechanically she took the
pen and said:

"I will sign it. I will take the risk. But you must tell me all about
it, right afterward, so that you can be arrested before you get out of
the house in case there should be anything criminal about this."

Then she signed; and I handed her Mrs. Clements's note, which was very
brief, very simple, and to the point. It said: "_Don't wear your arctics
in the White House._" It made her shout; and at my request she summoned
a messenger and we sent that card at once to the mail on its way to Mrs.
Clemens in Hartford.

When the little Ruth was about a year or a year and a half old, Mason,
an old and valued friend of mine, was consul-general at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. I had known him well in 1867, '68 and '69, in
America, and I and mine had spent a good deal of time with him and his
family in Frankfort in '78. He was a thoroughly competent, diligent, and
conscientious official. Indeed he possessed these qualities in so large
a degree that among American consuls he might fairly be said to be
monumental, for at that time our consular service was largely--and I
think I may say mainly--in the hands of ignorant, vulgar, and incapable
men who had been political heelers in America, and had been taken care
of by transference to consulates where they could be supported at the
Government's expense instead of being transferred to the poor house,
which would have been cheaper and more patriotic. Mason, in '78, had
been consul-general in Frankfort several years--four, I think. He had
come from Marseilles with a great record. He had been consul there
during thirteen years, and one part of his record was heroic. There had
been a desolating cholera epidemic, and Mason was the only
representative of any foreign country who stayed at his post and saw it
through. And during t