as
little less than literary style, and illuminated it with illustrations
and a philosophy that were the product of the most exhaustive reading.
"Your Ambassador has taught us something that we did not know before,"
an English friend remarked to an American. "That is that a man can be a
democrat and a man of culture at the same time." The Greek and Latin
authors had been Page's companions from the days when, as the holder of
the Greek Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, he had been a favourite pupil of
Basil L. Gildersleeve. British statesmen who had been trained at
Balliol, in the days when Greek was the indispensable ear-mark of a
gentleman, could thus meet their American associate on the most
sympathetic terms. Page likewise spoke a brand of idiomatic English
which immediately put him in a class by himself. He regarded words as
sacred things. He used them, in his writing or in his speech, with the
utmost care and discrimination; yet this did not result in a halting or
stilted style; he spoke with the utmost ease, going rapidly from thought
to thought, choosing invariably the one needful word, lighting up the
whole with whimsicalities all his own, occasionally emphasizing a good
point by looking downward and glancing over his eyeglasses, perhaps, if
he knew his companion intimately, now and then giving him a monitory tap
on the knee. Page, in fact, was a great and incessant talker; hardly
anything delighted him more than a companionable exchange of ideas and
impressions; he was seldom so busy that he would not push aside his
papers for a chat; and he would talk with almost any one, on almost any
subject--his secretaries, his stenographers, his office boys, and any
crank who succeeded in getting by the doorman--for, in spite of his
lively warnings against the breed, Page did really love cranks and took
a collector's joy in uncovering new types. Page's voice was normally
quiet; though he had spent all his early life in the South, the
characteristic Southern accents were ordinarily not observable; yet his
intonation had a certain gentleness that was probably an inheritance of
his Southern breeding. Thus, when he first began talking, his words
would ripple along quietly and rapidly; a characteristic pose was to sit
calmly, with one knee thrown over the other, his hands folded; as his
interest increased, however, he would get up, perhaps walk across the
room, or stand before the fireplace, his hands behind his back; a large
cigar,