put on a little askew. The English, who were prone to be critical of
our representatives, made a good deal of fun of Mr. Buchanan, and told
anecdotes about him which were probably exaggerated or apocryphal. It
was alleged, for example, that, speaking of the indisposition of a
female relative of his, he had observed that it was due to the
severity of the English climate. "She never enjoyed delicate health
at home," he had declared; "in fact, she was always one of the most
indelicate women I've ever known." And it was asserted that he had
been admonished by the Lord High Chamberlain, or by the Gold
Stick-in-Waiting, for expectorating upon the floor of her Majesty's
palace at a levee. Such ribaldries used to be popular in English
mouths concerning American visitors before the war; they were all of
similar tenor. Mrs. Abbott Lawrence was described as having bought a
handsome shawl at a shop on Lord Street, in Liverpool, and to have
walked down that populous thoroughfare with her new purchase on her
shoulders, ignorant that it bore the legend, inscribed on a white
card, which the salesman had neglected to remove, "Perfectly chaste."
The same lady was reported as saying, in asking an invitation to a
ball on behalf of Mrs. Augustus Peabody, of Boston, "I assure you, on
our side of the water, Mrs. Peabody is much more accustomed to grant
favors than to ask them." Such anecdotes seem to bear upon them the
stamp of the British manufacturer. There would not seem to be much
harm in them, yet it is such things that sometimes interfere most
acutely with the entente cordials between nations. We had another
glimpse of Mr. Buchanan, in London, about a year later, and he then
remarked to my mother, indirectly referring to such reports, that the
Queen had treated him very kindly. For the present, he faded from the
Rock Park horizon, and we returned to the robin; nor have I been able
to understand how it happened that he made so distinct an impression
upon my memory. But a child's memory is unaccountable, both in what it