life; and I have faithfully reported what I have seen--nothing more. At
the same time my observations, and more especially my conversations with
the scores of "bright" and amiable men it has been my privilege to meet,
have suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and apprehensions,
respecting the future of America and the English-speaking world, which I
shall try to formulate elsewhere. For the present, let me only sum up
my personal experiences in saying that all the pleasant expectations I
brought with me to America have been realised, all the forebodings
disappointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible than I had been
led to imagine. He always treated me with courtesy, sometimes with
comprehension. One gentleman alone (not an American, by the way) set
forth to be mildly humorous at my expense; and even he apologised in
advance, as it were, by prefixing his own portrait to the interview, as
who should say, "Look at me--how can I help it?" Again, I had been led
rather to fear American hospitality as being apt to become importunate
and exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial. Probably I
was too small game to bring the lion-hunters upon my trail. The alleged
habit of speech-making and speech-demanding on every possible occasion I
found to be merely mythical. Three times only was I called upon to "say
something," and on the first two occasions, being taken unawares, I said
everything I didn't want to say. The third time, having foreseen the
demand, I had noted down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue;
but when the time came I felt the atmosphere unpropitious, and
suppressed my rhetoric. The proceedings opened with an iced beverage,
called, I believe, a "Mississippi toddy," probably as being the longest
toddy on record, the father of (fire) waters; and on its down-lapsing
current my eloquence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The meeting,
fortunately, did not know what it had lost, and its serenity remained
unclouded. But it is not to the Mississippi toddies and other creature
comforts of America that I look back with gratitude and affection. It is