Palais and Sans Souci. "Is this a pheasant?" he asked
when the servant maid passed him his dish of meat. I
heard the mean young man whisper, "I guess not." Presently
some hash was brought in and Uncle said, "Ha! A Salmi!
Ha! excellent!" I could see that Mrs. O'Halloran, the
landlady, who sat at the other end of the table, was
greatly pleased.

I was surprised to find--because it is so hard to get
used to the change of things in our new life--that all
the people went on talking just the same after Uncle sat
down. At the palace at Potsdam nobody ever spoke at dinner
unless Uncle William first addressed him, and then he
was supposed to give a sort of bow and answer as briefly
as possible so as not to interrupt the flow of Uncle
William's conversation. Generally Uncle talked and all
the rest listened. His conversation was agreed by everybody
to be wonderful. Princes, admirals, bishops, artists,
scholars and everybody united in declaring that Uncle
William showed a range of knowledge and a brilliance of
language that was little short of marvellous. So naturally
it was a little disappointing at first to find that these
people just went on talking to one another and didn't
listen to Uncle William at all, or merely looked at him
in an inquisitive sort of way and whispered remarks to
one another. But presently, I don't just know how, Uncle
began to get the attention of the table and one after
the other the people stopped talking to listen to him.
I was very glad of this because Uncle was talking about
America and I was sure that it would interest them, as