grind out Sussex, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and so on,
like the tunes in a barrel organ. I could not wonder if our plain,
true-hearted German millionaires fell before a cunning so penetrated
with culture as this.

. . . . .

And now I come to the third and greatest surprise of all
that this strange old man gave me. When he asked me,
dryly enough, but not without a certain steady civility
that belongs to old-fashioned country people, what I wanted
and what I was doing, I told him the facts of the case,
explaining my political mission and the almost angelic qualities
of the Liberal candidate. Whereupon, this old man became
suddenly transfigured in the sunlight into a devil of wrath.
It was some time before I could understand a word he said,
but the one word that kept on recurring was the word "Kruger,"
and it was invariably accompanied with a volley of violent terms.
Was I for old Kruger, was I? Did I come to him and want him
to help old Kruger? I ought to be ashamed, I was . . . and
here he became once more obscure. The one thing that he made
quite clear was that he wouldn't do anything for Kruger.

"But you ARE Kruger," burst from my lips, in a natural explosion
of reasonableness. "You ARE Kruger, aren't you?"

After this innocent CRI DE COEUR of mine, I thought at first
there would be a fight, and I remembered with regret that
the President in early life had had a hobby of killing lions.
But really I began to think that I had been mistaken, and that it