an example of taste reticent
as compared with our own.

Two nights later my host dispatched me alone, to dine at what he
described to me as one of the pleasantest houses in New York. I shrank
from the prospect of the wintry journey involved, but the dinner was
worth the trouble. My entertainers--a mother and two unmarried
daughters--belonged to one of the oldest and best known New York
families. The house was in keeping with its inmates. It closely
resembled an old-fashioned house in Curzon Street. As I drove up to the
steps a butler and a groom of the chambers, both sedate with years and
exhaling an atmosphere of long family service, threw open tall doors,
and admitted me to the sober world within. The room in which the guests
were assembled seemed to be lined with books. On the tables were half
the literary reviews of Europe. My hostess and her daughters gave me the
kindest welcome. I was somewhat bewildered by the number of strange
faces, but among them was that of a diplomat whom I had known for many
years in London; and the "high seriousness," as Matthew Arnold might
have called it, of the men was tempered by the excellence of the dinner,
and by the dresses, perfect though subtly subdued, of the women.

Some days later Mr. Easley and an assistant secretary came from New
York to call on me and discuss the arrangements, of which I have already
spoken. Meanwhile I had secured rooms in the city at the Savoy Hotel, to
which in due time I migrated. The day after my arrival Mr. Easley
appeared again, and with him Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, the president
of Columbia University. It was arranged that my first addresses should
be given there under his auspices, and during the next three weeks I was
daily occupied in preparing them. When the day approached which had been
fixed for the delivery of the first, Doctor Butler gave a luncheon party
at the Metropolitan Club, at which he invited me to meet the editors and
other representatives of the weightiest of the New York papers. I
explained the general scheme of argument which I proposed to follow, and
it appeared, after an interchange of speeches, that it met with general
approbation.

This luncheon party and its results struck me as a marked example of the
promptitude and businesslike sagacity characteristic of American
methods. Every address which I delivered at Columbia University was
reported verbatim and fully in the columns of these great journals. The
audiences imme