. . .  We have a splendid, big old house—­not in any way pretentious—­a commonplace house in fact for fashionable London and the least showy and costly of the Embassies.  But it does very well—­it’s big and elegantly plain and dignified.  We have fifteen servants in the house.  They do just about what seven good ones would do in the United States, but they do it a great deal better.  They pretty nearly run themselves and the place.  The servant question is admirably solved here.  They divide the work according to a fixed and unchangeable system and they do it remarkably well—­in their own slow English way.  We simply let them alone, unless something important happens to go wrong.  Katharine simply tells the butler that we’ll have twenty-four people to dinner to-morrow night and gives him a list of them.  As they come in, the men at the door address every one correctly—­Your Lordship or Your Grace, or what not.  When they are all in, the butler comes to the reception room and announces dinner.  We do the rest.  As every man goes out, the butler asks him if he’ll have a glass of water or of grog or a cigar; he calls his car, puts him in it, and that’s the end of it.  Bully good plan.  But in the United States that butler, whose wages are less than the ramshackle nigger I had at Garden City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own.  But here he is a sort of duke downstairs.  He sits at the head of the servants’ table and orders them around and that’s worth more than money to an Old World servile mind.

The “season” doesn’t begin till the King comes back and Parliament opens, in February.  But every kind of club and patriotic and educational organization is giving its annual dinner now.  I’ve been going to them and making after-dinner speeches to get acquainted and also to preach into them some little knowledge of American ways and ideals.  They are very nice—­very.  You could not suggest or imagine any improvement in their kindness and courtesy.  They do all these things in some ways better than we.  They have more courtesy.  They make far shorter speeches.  But they do them all too much alike.  Still they do get much pleasure out of them and much instruction too.

Then we are invited to twice as many private dinners and luncheons as we can attend.  At these, these people are at their best.  But it is yet quite confusing.  A sea of friendly faces greets you—­you can’t remember the names.  Nobody ever introduces anybody to anybody; and if by accident anybody ever tries, he simply says “Uh-o-oh-Lord Xzwwxkmpt.”  You couldn’t understand it if you had to be hanged.

     But we are untangling some of this confusion and coming to make
     very real and very charming friends.