About December 20, everybody who is anybody leaves London.  They go to their country places for about a fortnight or they go to the continent.  Almost everything stops.  It has been the only dull time at the Embassy that I’ve had.  Nothing is going on now.  But up to two days ago, it kept a furious gait.  I’m glad of a little rest.

Dealing with the Government doesn’t present the difficulties that I feared.  Sir Edward Grey is in the main responsible for the ease with which it is done.  He is a frank and fair and truthful man.  You will find him the day after to-morrow precisely where you left him the day before yesterday.  We get along very well indeed.  I think we should get along if we had harder tasks one with the other.  And the English people are even more friendly than the Government.  You have no idea of their respect for the American Nation.  Of course there is much ignorance, sometimes of a surprising sort.  Very many people, for instance, think that all the Americans are rich.  A lady told me the other night how poor she is—­she is worth only $1,250,000—­“nothing like all you Americans.”  She was quite sincere.  In fact the wealth of the world (and the poverty, too) is centred here in an amazing way.  You can’t easily take it in—­how rich or how many rich English families there are.  They have had wealth for generation after generation, and the surprising thing is, they take care of it.  They spend enormously—­seldom ostentatiously—­but they are more than likely to add some of their income every year to their principal.  They have better houses in town and in the country than I had imagined.  They spend vast fortunes in making homes in which they expect to live forever—­generation after generation.

To an American democrat the sad thing is the servile class.  Before the law the chimney sweep and the peer have exactly the same standing.  They have worked that out with absolute justice.  But there it stops.  The serving class is what we should call abject.  It does not occur to them that they might ever become—­or that their descendants might ever become—­ladies and gentlemen.

The “courts” are a very fine sight.  The diplomatic ladies sit on a row of seats on one side the throne room, the Duchesses on a row opposite.  The King and Queen sit on a raised platform with the royal family.  The Ambassadors come in first and bow and the King shakes hands with them.  Then come the forty or more Ministers—­no shake for them.  In front of the King are a few officers in gaudy uniform, some Indians of high rank (from India) and the court officials are all round about, with pages who hold up the Queen’s train.  Whenever the Queen and King move, two court officials back before them, one carrying a gold stick and the other a silver stick.

The ladies to be presented come along.  They curtsy to the King, then to the Queen, and disappear in the rooms farther on.  The Ambassadors