profitable. Rodney Henderson--the name later became very familiar to the
public in connection with a certain Congressional investigation--was a
graduate of my own college, a New Hampshire boy, a lawyer by profession,
who practiced, as so many American lawyers do, in Wall Street, in
political combinations, in Washington, in railways. He was already known
as a rising man.

When I returned Mr. Lyon was still at our house. I understood that my
wife had persuaded him to extend his visit--a proposal he was little
reluctant to fall in with, so interested had he become in studying social
life in America. I could well comprehend this, for we are all making a
"study" of something in this age, simple enjoyment being considered an
unworthy motive. I was glad to see that the young Englishman was
improving himself, broadening his knowledge of life, and not wasting the
golden hours of youth. Experience is what we all need, and though love or
love-making cannot be called a novelty, there is something quite fresh
about the study of it in the modern spirit.

Mr. Lyon had made himself very agreeable to the little circle, not less
by his inquiring spirit than by his unaffected manners, by a kind of
simplicity which women recognize as unconscious, the result of an
inherited habit of not thinking about one's position. In excess it may be
very disagreeable, but when it is combined with genuine good-nature and
no self-assertion, it is attractive. And although American women like a
man who is aggressive towards the world and combative, there is the
delight of novelty in one who has leisure to be agreeable, leisure for
them, and who seems to their imagination to have a larger range in life
than those who are driven by business--one able to offer the peace and
security of something attained.