ng man to declare
himself. We are the puppets with whom he plays. It rests with him
whether our names are written upon the scroll of fame or whether our
administration is dismissed in half a dozen contemptuous words by the
coming historian. It rests with him whether our friend Bransome here
shall be proclaimed the greatest Foreign Minister that ever breathed,
and whether I myself have a statue erected to me in Westminster Yard,
which shall be crowned with a laurel wreath by patriotic young ladies on
the morning of my anniversary."

The Duke stretched himself out with a sigh of content. His cigar was
burning well, and the flavor of old Armignac lingered still upon his
palate.

"Come," he protested, "I think you exaggerate Maiyo's importance just
a little, Haviland. Hesho seems excellently disposed towards us, and,
after all, I should have thought his word would have had more weight in
Tokio than the word of a young man who is new to diplomacy, and whose
claims to distinction seem to rest rather upon his soldiering and the
fact that he is a cousin of the Emperor."

The Prime Minister sighed.

"Dear Duke," he said, "no one of us, not even myself, has ever done that
young man justice. To me he represents everything that is most strenuous
and intellectual in Japanese manhood. The spirit of that wonderful
country runs like the elixir of life itself through his veins. Since
the day he brought me his letter from the Emperor, I have watched him
carefully, and I believe I can honestly declare that not once in these
eighteen months has he looked away from his task, nor has he given to
one single person even an inkling of the thoughts which have passed
through his mind. He came back from the Continent, from Berlin, from
Paris, from Petersburg, with a mass of acquired information which would
have made some of our blue-books read like Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales.
He had made up his mind exactly what he thought of each country,
of their political systems, of their social life, of their military
importance. He had them all weighed up in the hollow of his hand. He was
willing to talk as long as I, for instance, was willing to listen. He
spoke of everybody whom he had met and every place which he had visited
without reserve, and yet I guarantee that there is no person in England
today, however much he may have talked with him, who knows in the least
what his true impressions are."

"Haviland is right," Bransome agreed. "Many a time