life in
London, when not led by Whistler's "Ha! Ha!" were commanded by Henley's
roar.

No man was ever more in need of a Boswell than Henley. Dr. Weir Mitchell
once complained to me that in America nobody waited upon great men to
report their sayings, while in England a young man was always somewhere
near with a clean cuff to scribble them on. The enthusiast, with his
cuff an impatient blank, never hung about Henley. Anyway, that was not
what our Thursday evenings were for. Of all his Young Men who climbed up
the Buckingham Street stairs with him on Thursday night and sat round
him, his devoted disciples, until they climbed down the Buckingham
Street stairs with him again, not one seems to have hit upon this useful
way of proving his devotion.

I do not need to be told that this was no excuse for my not having my
cuff ready. But, foolishly perhaps, I too often spent my Thursday nights
oppressed by other cares. For one thing, I could seldom keep my weekly
article on Cookery out of my mind. Without it Saturday's _Pall-Mall_, I
felt, would lose its brilliancy and my bank account, I knew, would grow
appreciably less, and Friday was my day for writing it. A serious
question therefore was, how, if I did not get to bed until two or three
or four o'clock on Friday morning, was I to sit down at my desk at nine
and be the brilliant authority on Eating that I thought I was?

Another distraction grew out of my mistaken sense of duty as hostess, my
feeling of responsibility in providing for all a share in the cheerful
smell of powder and the stimulating sound of strife.

Also, men being at best selfish animals, their wives, whose love of
battle was less, were often an anxiety.

These seemed big things at the time, though in retrospect they have
dwindled into trifles that I had no business to let come between me and
my opportunities to store up for future generations talk as brilliant as
any on record. Of course I heard a great deal of it, and what I missed
at home on our Thursday nights, I made up for at Henley's, and at
friends' houses on many other occasions, and few can answer better than
I for the quality of Henley's talk if I have forgotten the actual words.
Its strength was its simple directness,--no posing, no phrasing, no
attitudinizing for effect. This, I know, was always what most struck
people when they first met him on our Thursday nights, especially
Americans, for with us in America the man who has won the reputat