To Mrs. Ralph W. Page

     London, Christmas-is-coming, 1913.

     MY DEAR LEILA: 

. . .  Her work [Mrs. Walter H. Page’s] is all the work of going and receiving and—­of reading.  She reads incessantly and enormously; and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed.  That’s all there is about it.  Lord!  I wish I could.  But, when I get tired, I have to go and make another speech.  They think the American Ambassador has omniscience for a foible and oratory as a pastime.

In some ways my duties are very instructive.  We get different points of view on many things, some better than we had before had, some worse.  For instance, life is pretty well laid out here in water-tight compartments; and you can’t let a stream in from one to another without danger of sinking the ship.  Four reporters have been here to-day because Mr. and Mrs. Sayre[31] arrived this morning.  Every one of ’em asked the same question, “Who met them at the station?” That’s the chief thing they wished to know.  When I said “I did”—­that fixed the whole thing on the highest peg of dignity.  They could classify the whole proceeding properly, and they went off happy.  Again:  You’ve got to go in to dinner in the exact order prescribed by the constitution; and, if you avoid that or confuse that, you’ll never be able to live it down.  And so about Government, Literature, Art—­everything.  Don’t you forget your water-tight compartments.  If you do, you are gone!  They have the same toasts at every public dinner.  One is to “the guests.”  Now you needn’t say a word about the guests when you respond.  But they’ve been having toasts to the guests since the time of James I and they can’t change it.  They had me speak to “the guests” at a club last night, when they wanted me to talk about Mexico!  The winter has come—­the winter months at least.  But they have had no cold weather—­not so cold as you have in Pinehurst.  But the sun has gone out to sea—­clean gone.  We never see it.  A damp darkness (semi-darkness at least) hangs over us all the time.  But we manage to feel our way about.

A poor photograph goes to you for Xmas—­a poor thing enough surely.  But you get Uncle Bob[32] busy on the job of paying for an Ambassador’s house.  Then we’ll bring Christmas presents home for you.  What a game we are playing, we poor folks here, along with Ambassadors whose governments pay them four times what ours pays.  But we don’t give the game away, you bet!  We throw the bluff with a fine, straight poker face.

     Affectionately,
     W.H.P.

     To Frank N. Doubleday and Others

     London, Sunday, December 28, 1913.

     MY DEAR COMRADES: