and ambitions.  Then must come their conferences with the enemy.  Then there are sure to be other conferences to try to make peace secure.  And, of course, many are going to be dissatisfied and disappointed, and perhaps out of these disappointments other wars may come.  The world will not take up its knitting and sit quietly by the fire for many a year to come....

     Affectionately,

     W.H.P.

One happiness came to Mr. and Mrs. Page in the midst of all these war alarums.  On August 4, 1915, their only daughter, Katharine, was married to Mr. Charles G. Loring, of Boston, Massachusetts.  The occasion gave the King an opportunity of showing the high regard in which Page and his family were held.  It had been planned that the wedding should take place in Westminster Abbey, but the King very courteously offered Miss Page the Royal chapel in St. James’s Palace.  This was a distinguished compliment, as it was the first time that any marriage, in which both bride and bridegroom were foreigners, had ever been celebrated in this building, which for centuries has been the scene of royal weddings.  The special place which his daughter had always held in the Ambassador’s affections is apparent in the many letters that now followed her to her new home in the United States.  The unique use Page made of the initials of his daughter’s name was characteristic.

     To Mrs. Charles G. Loring

     London, September 1, 1915.

     MY DEAR K.A.  P-TAIN: 

Here’s a joke on your mother and Frank:  We three (and Smith) went up to Broadway in the car, to stay there a little while and then to go on into Wales, etc.  The hotel is an old curiosity shop; you sit on Elizabethan chairs by a Queen Anne table, on a drunken floor, and look at the pewter platters on the wall or do your best to look at them, for the ancient windows admit hardly any light.  “Oh! lovely,” cries Frank; and then he and your mother make out in the half-darkness a perfectly wonderful copper mug on the mantelpiece; and you go out and come in the ramshackle door (stooping every time) after you’ve felt all about for the rusty old iron latch, and then you step down two steps (or fall), presently to step up two more.  Well, for dinner we had six kinds of meat and two meat pies and potatoes and currants!  My dinner was a potato.  I’m old and infirm and I have many ailments, but I’m not so bad off as to be able to live on a potato a day.  And since we were having a vacation, I didn’t see the point.  So I came home where I have seven courses for dinner, all good; and Mrs. Leggett took my place in the car.  That carnivorous company went on.  They’ve got to eat six kinds of meat and two meat pies and—­currants!  I haven’t.  Your mother calls me up on the phone every morning—­me, who am living here in luxury, seven courses at every dinner—­and asks anxiously, “And how are you, dear?” I answer:  “Prime, and how are