and brought me the
invitation, willingly accepted, to sit with them at dinner.

There was no sign of the Duchess or Cristine or Oliphant. Whatever had
happened, that household to-day required all hands on deck, and I was
left alone with the Americans. In my day I have supped with the
Macaronies, I have held up my head at the Cocoa Tree, I have avoided
the floor at hunt dinners, I have drunk glass to glass with Tom
Carteron. But never before have I seen such noble consumers of good
liquor as those four gentlemen from beyond the Atlantic. They drank
the strong red Cyprus as if it had been spring-water. "The dust of
your Italian roads takes some cleansing, Mr. Townshend," was their only
excuse, but in truth none was needed. The wine seemed only to thaw
their iron decorum. Without any surcease of dignity they grew
communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples to
constitutions. Before we knew it we were embarked upon high politics.

Naturally we did not differ on the war. Like me, they held it to have
been a grievous necessity. They had no bitterness against England,
only regrets for her blunders. Of his Majesty they spoke with respect,
of his Majesty's advisers with dignified condemnation. They thought
highly of our troops in America; less highly of our generals.

"Look you, sir," said Mr. Galloway, "in a war such as we have witnessed
the Almighty is the only strategist. You fight against the forces of
Nature, and a newcomer little knows that the success or failure of
every operation he can conceive depends not upon generalship, but upon
the confirmation of a vast country. Our generals, with this in mind
and with fewer men, could make all your schemes miscarry. Had the
English soldiers not been of such stubborn stuff, we should have been
victors from the first. Our leader was not General Washington but
General America, and his brigadiers were forests, swamps, lakes,
rivers, and high mountains."

"And now," I said, "having won, you have the greatest of human
experiments before you. Your business is to show that the Saxon stock
is adaptable to a republic."

It seemed to me that they exchanged glances.

"We are not pedants," said Mr. Fish, "and have no desire to dispute
about the form of a constitution. A people may be as free under a king
as under a senate. Liberty is not the lackey of any type of government."

These were strange words from a member of a race whom I had thought
we