lives. It is a dingy, ugly-looking
building, attractive only by reason of its associations. In the year
that America declared her independence number 10 Downing Street was the
residence of Lord North, and it may then, as now, have had connecting
doors which made the two houses into practically one official home.

Lloyd George discussed public affairs in a corner of the old library
lined with books which Gladstone used to consult half a century ago and
his predecessors before him. A glance round the rows of volumes,
nearly all of them ponderous and many of them venerable, caused me to
ask Lloyd George who was his favorite author. He gave me no
philosopher, not even a poet, in reply. "I like romance," he said,
"historical romance. I am fond of Dumas and of modern writers like
Stanley Weyman." Possibly Lloyd George has never looked into those
old, handsome, leather-covered volumes at his official residence. His
secretaries may have pondered over them in securing material for their
chief, but Lloyd George has been too busy doing things to devote much
time to ancient philosophical reflections or to learned economic
theories. It is easy to understand how his temperament found
satisfaction and relaxation at the same time in the cut-and-thrust work
of Dumas and Weyman. I ought, perhaps, to add that he explained with a
smile how politics did not leave him much time for serious reading just
then. They have certainly left him still less since that time.

We were in the thick of talk about the busy political era when a little
girl of twelve, with a ribbon of blue round her tumbling hair, came
running into the room, not knowing that a visitor was present. She
would have run out again, upon seeing me, if her father had not stopped
her and caught her into his arms. For the rest of the interview she
sat on his knee, listening with big, live eyes to the conversation.
Once she cuddled closer to her father and laughed merrily as he
confessed to me that his next bill before Parliament was one to
prohibit the holidays of little girls at school from lasting more than
six weeks. Megan was the darling of her father's heart. Two or three
mornings of the week you could have seen them hand in hand walking from
11 Downing Street across St. James's Park to watch the ducks feeding in
the lake. With sparkling blue eyes, a sensitive mouth, and vivacious
manner, little Megan had some of her father's characteristics. She was
a daughte