ad
contracted, from living so long with strangers, a delightfully frank
and free way of speaking. He never gave me, as he used to, the least
feeling of constraint; he always seemed perfectly at his ease. And
he had acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a
tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion,
and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called
influential people often acquire--the melancholy confidential smile,
the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they
receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering
eye. He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and
in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech
that he was following them, and intelligently sympathizing with them.

He did not then tell me much about himself. He confessed that the
most rapturous feeling he had known since he set off on his travels,
was the hour or two as he whirled through the flat pasture-lands and
the pleasant green of Kent.

He gave me no detailed descriptions of adventures, but hinted in a
suggestive way that he had seen much, and thought more. "I think I
have learnt myself very fairly," was the only remark he made about
his own personal experience.

"To finish my tour," he said, "I want to see something of my native
land. I have been away so long, that I don't know where to begin, and
I want you to help me. I want to be introduced to a few Christian
households, that I may see the kind of people that our Western
friends are."

I had an uncle, a Mr. Raymond, who had made a fortune in business,
lived in a fine house in Lancaster Gate, and saw a good deal of
fairly interesting and cultivated people. I took him to dine there
once or twice, and he needed nothing else. He had a real genius
for _tete-a-tete_ conversation; that is, he could listen without
appearing only to listen. He made people feel at their best with
him. My aunt's criticism of him was highly characteristic of the
British matron and her choice of friends.

"I thoroughly approve, Harry," she said to me, "of your friend, Mr.
Hamilton. He is very well-informed and clever, and he doesn't allow
it to make him in the least disagreeable." And starting from this, he
was asked to dinner by, and invited to visit, a fair selection of
pleasant people.

Of the events which immediately succeeded his return to England I
can not, for two reasons, give a