aled these emotions and proceeded to
plunge into an animated conversation with his guests. Indeed, it
assumed the character of a monologue in which he frequently adverted
to the weather, to be off on a tangent the next moment on a discussion
of finance, politics, sociology, on which subjects, however, he was
far from showing the positiveness and fixed opinion that he did while
descanting upon the weather. In all the subjects he touched upon, he
exhibited a certain skill in so framing his remarks that they would
not run counter to any prejudices or opposite opinions of his
auditors, but the feelings of the auditors having been elicited,
served as a preamble from which he could go on, warmly agreeing with
their views in the further and more complete unfolding of his own. He
was between twenty-seven and thirty years of age, of a somewhat spare
figure, and in the well-proportioned features of his face there was no
one that would attract attention beyond the others and easily remain
fixed in memory. He was not without an appearance of intelligence and
his chest was thrown out and the small of his back drawn in after the
manner of the Prussian ex-sergeants who give instruction in athletics
and the cultivation of a proper carriage to the elite of this city,
and withal he had the appearance of a person of substance and of
consequence in his community. In the midst of a pause where he was
occupied in putting his soup-spoon into his mouth, Miss Bording
remarked:

"Please do not talk about commonplace American subjects, Mr. Leadbury.
Tell us of your foreign life. Tell us of Algeria. What sort of a
country is Algeria?"

Turning his eyes toward the chandelier about him and with an elegance
of enunciation that did much to relieve the undeniably monotonous
evenness of his discourse, he began:

"Algeria, the largest and most important of the French colonial
possessions, is a country of northern Africa, bounded on the north by
the Mediterranean, west by Morocco, south by the desert of Sahara, and
east by Tunis. It extends for about five hundred and fifty miles along
the coast and inland from three hundred to four hundred miles.
Physiographically it may be roughly divided into three zones," and so
on for a considerable length until by an accident which Clarissa could
attribute to nothing but inconceivable awkwardness, Judge Bording
dropped a glass of water, crash! Having ceased his disquisition at
this accident, so disconcerting to t