ax old in thy work.
Ecclesiasticus XI. 20.

CHAPTER XXI
VISITS TO ENGLAND
1896

In 1896 I found myself again utterly broken down in health
and strength. I had, the November before, a slight paralysis
in the face, which affected the muscles of the lower lid of
one of my eyes, causing a constant irritation in the organ
itself. After a time this caused a distortion of the lips,
which I concealed somewhat by a moustache. But it operated,
for a little while, as an effective disguise. When I came
home during the winter, an old conductor on the Boston & Albany
Railroad, whom I had known quite well, when he took my ticket
looked at me with some earnestness and said, "Are you not
related to Senator Hoar?" To which I answered, "I am a connection
of his wife, by marriage."

I found I must get rid of the work at home, if I were to
get back my capacity for work at all. So I sailed for Southampton
before the session of Congress ended. It was the only time
I had absented myself from my duties in Congress, except for
an urgent public reason, for twenty-seven years and more.

I saw a good many interesting English people. It is not
worth while to give the details of dinners and lunches and
social life, unless something of peculiar and general interest
occur. Almost every American who can afford it goes abroad
now. Our English kinsmen are full of hospitality. They have
got over their old coldness with which they were apt to receive
their American cousins, although they were always the most
delightfully hospitable race on earth when you had once got
within the shield of their reserve.

I remember especially, however, a very pleasant Sunday spent
on the Thames, at the delightful home of William Grenfell,
Esq., which I mention because, by a fortunate accident, the
visit had some very interesting consequences. There I met
Sir John Lubbock, now Baron Avebury, famous for his writings
on financial questions and on Natural History, especially
for his observations of the habits of ants. He told me, if
I am not mistaken, that he had personally watched the conduct
and behavior of more than fifteen thousand individual ants.
There was a company of agreeable English ladies and gentlemen.
They played games in the evening after dinner, as you might
expect of a company of American boys and girls of sixteen
or eighteen years old.

Mr. Grenfell was a famous sportsman. His house was filled
with the trophies of his skill in hun