know; I leave that to the President's discretion. Before his departure
to the frontier, the King will of course be made honorary manager of
one of the principal hotels.

I hope to be present in Berne during these great days in the
President's life. But, if anything happen to keep me here, I shall
content myself with the prospect of his visit to London. I long to see
him and his wife driving past, with the proper escort of Life Guards,
under a vista of quadrilingual mottoes, bowing acknowledgments to us.
I wonder what he is like. I picture him as a small spare man, with a
slightly grizzled beard, and pleasant though shifty eyes behind a
pince-nez. I picture him frock-coated, bowler-hatted, and evidently
nervous. His wife I cannot at all imagine.


A CLUB IN RUINS

An antique ruin has its privileges. The longer the period of its
crumbling, the more do the owls build their nests in it, the more do
the excursionists munch in it their sandwiches. Thus, year by year,
its fame increases, till it looks back with contempt on the days when
it was a mere upright waterproof. Local guide-books pander more and
more slavishly to its pride; leader-writers in need of a pathetic
metaphor are more and more frequently supplied by it. If there be any
sordid question of clearing it away to make room for something else,
the public outcry is positively deafening.

Not that we are still under the sway of that peculiar cult which beset
us in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. A bad poet or
painter can no longer reap the reward of genius merely by turning his