their temper, and the evening was all but ruined thereby, when a happy
thought struck me. Although as the guest of the evening I had spoken, I
rose again to apologise for being an Englishman! I confessed that I had
listened to the two speeches, but their brilliancy and wit were
entirely lost upon me; the subtle humour of the American passed an
Englishman's understanding. Their personalities and political passages
were no doubt ingenious "bluff," but so cleverly serious and so well
acted that I had for four-fifths of the acrimonious speeches been
entirely taken in. At this all laughed loud at my stupidity, and the
evening ended pleasantly.

The secretary of this dinner, which was a most excellent one, was the
celebrated Delmonico, but it was not held at his famous restaurant. To
have been complete it ought really to have been held in a barber's shop,
for some of those establishments in America are palatial, and even minor
barbers' shops are utilised in a curious way. One Sunday afternoon as I
was taking a walk I overheard some singing in a shop devoted to hair
dressing, and looking in I saw an extraordinary sight. There were about
a dozen old ladies seated in the barbers' chairs, with their backs to
the looking-glasses and brushes, singing hymns. It was a meeting of the
Plymouth Brethren, who hired the shop for their devotions!

Of course at the Pointed Beards' dinner in New York we had oysters with
beards--but no American dinner is complete without their famous oysters.
Unfortunately I have to make the extraordinary confession that I never
tasted an oyster in my life, and as I am touching upon gastronomy, I may
also mention that I never touch cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and
I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat
cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my
cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as
dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was
asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But
my friends kindly provided some impromptu dishes without cheese or
oysters and other, to me, objectionable things. I was not so lucky in
Baltimore. We all know Baltimore is celebrated for its oysters, and the
night I arrived a dinner was given to me at the Baltimore Club, which
opened as usual with dishes of magnificent oysters. The head waiter, a
well-known figure, an old "darkie" with grey