our rusticity--the spotlight which reveals the everlasting jay in
us! We went to the Ritz largely because it seemed to me that as a
leading American orator, Henry should have proper European terminal
facilities. And the Ritz looked to me like the proper setting for
an international figure. There, it seemed to me, the rich and the
great would congregate to invite him to dinners, and to me, at
least, who had imagination, there seemed something rather splendid
in fancying the gentry saying, "Ah, yes--Henry J. Allen, of
Wichita--the next governor of Kansas, I understand!" Henry indicated
his feeling about the Ritz thus: The night we arrived he failed,
for the first time in two weeks, to demand a dress rehearsal in
our $17.93 uniforms from 43rd Street in New York. The gold braided
uniforms that we saw in the corridors of the Ritz that night made
us pause and consider many things. When we unpacked our valises,
there were the little bundles just as they had come from 43rd
Street. Henry tucked his away with a sigh, and just before he went
to sleep he called across the widening spaces between sleep and
wakening: "I suppose we might have bought that $23.78 outfit, easy
enough!"

It was in the morning that the veneer of the Ritz began to wear
off for Henry. He had pulled a bath and found it cold; they were
conserving fuel and no hot water was allowed in the hotels of
Paris excepting Friday and Saturday nights. The English, who are
naturally mean, declare that the French save seventy-five per cent
of the use of their hot water by putting the two hot water nights
together, as no living Frenchman ever took a bath two consecutive
days. But it did not seem that way to Henry and me. And anyway we
heard these theories later. But that morning Henry, who doesn't
really mind a cold bath, was ready for it when he happened to look