“Yes,” he said, “that’s true, but men of that type, while they are often worse than they are painted are more often much better than the best the public think of them!  I am the successor of the late Duke, and speak with authority on at least one case.”

He took me through the palace, not only the parts usually open to the public but the private apartments also, and later in the afternoon he took me over some of the property at Woodstock, stopping for a few minutes at the house of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Rector of Exeter College had invited a group of the leaders of the convention to a luncheon in Exeter and, because I was the only American, I was asked to be present and deliver a short address.

The grounds of Exeter show the good results of the four or five hundred years’ care bestowed upon them.  In my brief sojourn in Oxford as a student I had been chased out of the grounds of Exeter by the caretaker, under the suspicion that I was a burglar, taking the measure of the walks, windows, doors, etc.

I told this story to a man with whom I later exchanged cards; he was an old man and his card, read “W.  Creese, Y.M.C.A. secretary, June 6, 1844.”

“You were in early, brother,” I said.  “Yes,” he said modestly, “I was in first.”  He helped George Williams to organize the first branch of the Y.M.C.A.  My story went the rounds of those invited to luncheon and prepared the way for the address I delivered.

The first thing I did on my return from Europe was to visit the last known address of the girl friend of my youth.  It was in a Negro quarter of the city.

“Does Mrs. G——­ live here?” I asked the coloured woman who opened the door.

“She did, mistah—­but she done gone left, dis mawnin’.”

“Do you know where she has gone?”

“Yes’r, she done squeezed in wif ol’ Mammy Jackson,” and she pointed out the tenement.

As I passed down the steps I noticed a small pile of furniture on the sidewalk.  Something impelled me to ask about it.

“Yes’r,” the negress said, “dem’s her house traps; d’ landlord done gone frow’d dem out.”

I found her sitting with an old negress by the stove in a second-floor back tenement.

“I bring you a message of love from your mother,” I said, without making myself known.  We talked for a few minutes.  I saw nothing whatever of the girl of long ago.  There was a little of the voice—­the fine musical voice—­but nothing of form, nothing of feature.  Deep lines of care and suffering marred her face and labour had calloused her hands.  She was poorly dressed—­had been ill and out of work, and behind in her rent.  Too proud to beg, she was starving with her neighbours, the black people.  I excused myself, found the landlord, and rearranged the home she had so heroically struggled to hold intact.

“Do you remember the farm at Moylena?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.”