I thank you heartily for your good news about Tyrrell, about the President (but I’m sorry he’s tired:  make him quit eating meat and play golf); about the Panama tolls; about the Currency Bill (my love to McAdoo); about my own little affairs.—­We are looking with the very greatest pleasure to the coming of the young White House couple.  I’ve got two big dinners for them—­Sir Edward, the Lord Chancellor, a duchess or two, some good folk, Ruth Bryan, a couple of ambassadors, etc., etc., etc.  Then we’ll take ’em to a literary speaking-feast or two, have ’em invited to a few great houses; then we’ll give ’em another dinner, and then we’ll get a guide for them to see all the reforming institutions in London, to their hearts’ content—­lots of fun.

Lots of fun:  I got the American Society for its Thanksgiving dinner to invite the Lord Chancellor to respond to a toast to the President.  He’s been to the United States lately and he is greatly pleased.  So far, so good.  Then I came down here—­where he, too, is staying.  After five or six hours’ talk about everything else he said, “By the way, your countrymen have invited me,” etc., etc.  “Now what would be appropriate to talk about?” Then I poured him full of the New Principle as regards Central and South America; for, if he will talk on that, what he says will be reported and read on both continents.  He’s a foxy Scot, and he didn’t say he would, but he said that he’d consider it.  “Consider it” means that he will confer with Sir Edward.  I’m beginning to learn their vocabulary.  Anyhow the Lord Chancellor is in line.

It’s good news you send always.  Keep it up—­keep it up.  The volume of silence that I get is oppressive.  You remember the old nigger that wished to pick a quarrel with another old nigger?  Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed at nigger No. 2, and kept on swearing and storming, hoping to provoke him.  Nigger No. 2 said not a word, but kept at his work.  Nigger No. 1 swore and stormed more.  Nigger No. 2 said not a word.  Nigger No. 1 frothed still more.  Nigger No. 2, still silent.  Nigger No. 1 got desperate and said:  “Look here, you kinky-headed, flat-nosed, slab-footed nigger, I warns you ’fore God, don’t you keep givin’ me none o’ your damned silence!” I wish you’d tell all my friends that story.

     Always heartily yours,

     WALTER H. PAGE.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 34:  Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Duchess of Fife were married in the Chapel Royal, October 16, 1913.]

[Footnote 35:  See the Appendix (at end of Vol.  II) for this episode in detail.]

[Footnote 36:  There was a suggestion, which the Ambassador endorsed, that President Wilson should visit England to accept, in the name of the United States, Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral hone, of the Washingtons.  See Chapter IX, page 274.]