Mr. Lowell is another memory of these early London days. My first sight
of him was at Mr. and Mrs. Westlake's house--in a temper! For some one
had imprudently talked of "Yankeeisms," perhaps with some "superior"
intonation. And Mr. Lowell--the Lowell of _A Certain Condescension in
Foreigners_--had flashed out: "It's you English who don't know your own
language and your own literary history. Otherwise you would realize that
most of what you call 'Yankeeisms' are merely good old English which you
have thrown away."

Afterward, I find records of talks with him at Russell Square, then of
Mrs. Lowell's death in 1885, and finally of dining with him in the
spring of 1887, just before his return to America. At that dinner was
also the German Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, a handsome man, with a
powerful, rather somber face. I remember some talk with him after dinner
on current books and politics. Just thirty years ago! Mr. Lowell had
then only four years to live. He and all other diplomats had just passed
through an anxious spring. The scare of another Franco-German war had
been playing on the nerves of Europe, started by the military party in
Germany, merely to insure the passing of the famous Army law of that
year--the first landmark in that huge military expansion of which we see
the natural fruit in the present Armageddon.

A week or two before this dinner the German elections had given the
Conservatives an enormous victory. Germany, indeed, was in the full
passion of economic and military development--all her people growing
rich--intoxicated, besides, with vague dreams of coming power. Yet I
have still before me the absent, indecipherable look of her
Ambassador--a man clearly of high intelligence--at Mr. Lowell's table.
Thirty years--and at the end of them America was to be at grips with
Germany, sending armies across the Atlantic to fight in Europe. It would