hat? Anybody can be a superior person if
he can only choose his ground and stick to it. That is the trick that
royal personages have understood. It is etiquette for kings to lead the
conversation always. One must be a very stupid person not to shine
under such circumstances.

Suppose you have to give an audience to a distinguished archaeologist who
has spent his life in Babylonian excavations. Fifteen minutes before his
arrival you take up his book and glance through it till you find an easy
page that you can understand. You master page 142. Here you are secure.
You pour into the astonished ear of your guest your views upon the
subject. Such ripe erudition in one whose chief interests lie elsewhere
seems to him almost superhuman. Your views on page 142 are so sound that
he longs to continue the conversation into what had before seemed the
more important matter contained in page 143. But etiquette forbids. It
is your royal prerogative to confine yourself to the safe precincts of
page 142, and you leave it to his imagination to conceive the wisdom
which might have been given to the world had it been your pleasure to
expound the whole subject of archaeology.

I had myself, in a very humble way, an experience of this kind. In a
domestic crisis it was necessary to placate a newly arrived and
apparently homesick cook. I am unskilled in diplomacy, but it was a case
where the comfort of an innocent family depended on diplomatic action. I
learned that the young woman came from Prince Edward Island. Up to that
moment I confess that Prince Edward Island had been a mere geographical
expression. All my ideas about it were wrong, I having mixed it up with
Cape Breton, which as I now know is quite different. But instantly
Prince Edward Island became a matter of intense interest. Our daily
bread was dependent on it. I entered my study and with atlas and
encyclopaedia sought to atone for the negligence of years. I learned how
Prince Edward Island lay in relation to Nova Scotia, what were its
principal towns, its climate, its railroad and steam-boat connections,
and acquired enough miscellaneous information to adorn a five-minutes
personally conducted conversation. Thus freshly furnished forth, I
adventured into the kitchen.

Did she take the boat from Georgetown to Pictou? She did. Isn't it too
bad that the strait is sometimes frozen over in winter? It is. Some
people cross to New Brunswick on ice boats from Cape Traverse; that must