times.  They have friends to stay with them half the time, perhaps—­sometimes parties of a dozen.  England never had a finer lot of folk than these.  And you see them everywhere.  The art of living sanely they have developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at any time in any land.

The present political battle is fiercer than you would ever guess.  The Lords feel that they are sure to be robbed:  they see the end of the ordered world.  Chaos and confiscation lie before them.  Yet that, too, has nearly always been so.  It was so in the Reform Bill days.  Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things abolished than anybody hopes or fears, and that there would be the same problems in some form for many generations.  I’m beginning to believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the future—­that’s what’s keeps him so alert.  They say to me:  “You have frightful things happen in the United States—­your Governor of New York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety of your government.”  In the newspaper comments on my Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; the American Ambassador assures us that the note of hope is the dominant note of the Republic—­etc., etc.  Yes, they are dull, in a way—­not dull, so much as steady; and yet they have more solid sense than any other people.

It’s an interesting study—­the most interesting in the world.  The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise and without limit.  In this they show a strange contradiction to their dickering habits in trade and their “unctuous rectitude” in stealing continents.  I know a place in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line into other people’s territory.  I guess they really believe that the earth belongs to them.

     Sincerely,
     W.H.P.

     To Arthur W. Page[18]

     Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland. 
     September 6, 1913.

     Dear Arthur: 

Your mother and Kitty[19] and I are on our way to see Andy[20].  Had you any idea that to motor from London to Skibo means driving more than eight hundred miles?  Our speedometer now shows more than seven hundred and we’ve another day to go—­at least one hundred and thirty miles.  And we haven’t even had a tire accident.  We’re having a delightful journey—­only this country yields neither vegetables nor fruits, and I have to live on oatmeal.  They spell it p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it puruge.  But they beat all creation as carnivorous folk.  We stayed last night at a beautiful mountain hotel at Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote “Treasure Island”) and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner and eggs in three ways, and no vegetables