yard. The sense of a mighty and culminating event sharpened the air. The
great inn was full of jollity and excitement, and the reception-clerks
thereof had the negligent mien of those who know that every bedroom
is taken and every table booked. The club (not one of the mysterious
ones, but an ingenuous plain club of patriarchs who had once been young
in the university and were now defying time) was crammed with amiable
confusion, and its rich carpets protected for the day against the feet
of bald lads, who kept aimlessly walking up-stairs and down-stairs and
from room to room, out of mere friendly exuberance.

And after the inn and the club I was conducted into a true American
home, where the largest and most free hospitality was being practised
upon a footing of universal intimacy. You ate standing; you ate sitting;
you ate walking the length of the long table; you ate at one small
table, and then you ate at another. You talked at random to strangers
behind and strangers before. And when you couldn't think of anything to
say, you just smiled inclusively. You knew scarcely anybody's name, but
the heart of everybody. Impossible to be ceremonious! When a young woman
bluntly inquired the significance of that far-away look in your eye,
impossible not to reply frankly that you were dreaming of a second
helping of a marvelous pie up there at the end of the long table; and
impossible not to eat all the three separate second helpings that were
instantly thrust upon you! The chatter and the good-nature were
enormous. This home was an expression of the democracy of the university
at its best. Fraternity was abroad; kindliness was abroad; and therefore
joy. Whatever else was taught at the university, these were taught, and
they were learnt. If a publicist asked me what American civilization had
achieved, I would answer that among other things it had achieved this
hour in this modest home.