sang college songs, much to
the scandalisation of our English friends on the next boats, who seemed
to regard dinner as a sacrament. Peters, the butler, would lie in wait
for us while we were dancing, to whisper as we careered past him:

"Miss, the fowl is getting cold," or "Miss, the ice cream is getting
warm," but he did it once too often, so Bee waltzed on his foot. Whereat
he limped off and we saw no more of him.

Soon the professional entertainers who ply up and down the river during
Henley week discovered the "Ammurikins," as they called us, and we had
our first encounter that night with the Thames nigger, a creature
painfully unlike that delightful commodity at home. The Thames nigger is
generally a cockney covered with blackening, which only alters his skin
and does not change his accent. To us it sounded deliciously funny to
hear this self-styled African call us "Leddies," and say "Halways" and
say "'Aven't yer, now?" They sang in a very indifferent manner, but were
rather quick in their retorts.

Our large uninvited, but welcome audience, who had drawn so near that
they could not use their oars and only pulled their boats along by the
gunwales of the other boats, laughed at these witticisms rather
inquiringly. Always slightly unconvinced, they seemed to have no inward
desire to laugh, but yielded politely to the requirements, owing to the
niggers' harlequin costume and blackened face.

To the student of human nature there is nothing so exquisitely
ridiculous on the face of the globe as the typical British audience, at
a show which appeals humourously to the intellect rather than to the
eye. For this reason the Princetonians were indefatigable in their
conversation with the niggers, for the electric lights of the _Lulu_
illuminated the faces of our audience, which soon, in addition to the
strolling craft of the river, numbered many canoes from the neighbouring
house-boats, who were attracted by the gaiety and lights, thus forming a
typical river audience, thoroughly mixed, seemingly on pleasure bent,
good humoured, well behaved, polite, stolid, British.

Jimmie is hospitable to the core of his being, and nothing pleased him
better than to keep "open house-boat" for the entire floating population
of the Thames during Henley week. Every afternoon it was particularly
the custom about tea time for boats containing music hall quartettes or
a boatload of Geisha girls to pull up in front of the house-boat and
re