was continued.  “My friend reminds me,” said the Senator, “that the matter is one of custom rather than law; and I am obliged to him.  But the custom which is damnable and cruel, is backed by law which is equally so.  If I have land I can not only give it all to my eldest son, but I can assure the right of primogeniture to his son, though he be not yet born.  No one I think will deny that there must be a special law to enable me to commit an injustice so unnatural as that.”

“Hence it comes that you still suffer under an aristocracy almost as dominant, and in its essence as irrational, as that which created feudalism.”  The gentlemen collected on the platform looked at each other and smiled, perhaps failing to catch the exact meaning of the Senator’s words.  “A lord here has a power, as a lord, which he cannot himself fathom and of which he daily makes an unconscious but most deleterious use.  He is brought up to think it natural that he should be a tyrant.  The proclivities of his order are generous, and as a rule he gives more than he takes.  But he is as injurious in the one process as in the other.  Your ordinary Briton in his dealing with a lord expects payment in some shape for every repetition of the absurd title;—­and payment is made.  The titled aristocrat pays dearer for his horse, dearer for his coat, dearer for his servant than other people.  But in return he exacts much which no other person can get.  Knowing his own magnanimity he expects that his word shall not be questioned.  If I may be allowed I will tell a little story as to one of the most generous men I have had the happiness of meeting in this country, which will explain my meaning.”

Then, without mentioning names he told the story of Lord Rufford, Goarly, and Scrobby, in such a way as partly to redeem himself with his audience.  He acknowledged how absolutely he had been himself befooled, and how he had been done out of his money by misplaced sympathy.  He made Mrs. Goarly’s goose immortal, and in imitating the indignation of Runce the farmer and Bean the gamekeeper showed that he was master of considerable humour.  But he brought it all round at last to his own purpose, and ended this episode of his lecture by his view of the absurdity and illegality of British hunting.  “I can talk about it to you,” he said, “and you will know whether I am speaking the truth.  But when I get home among my own people, and repeat my lecture there, as I shall do,—­with some little additions as to the good things I have found here from which your ears may be spared,—­I shall omit this story as I know it will be impossible to make my countrymen believe that a hundred harum-scarum tomboys may ride at their pleasure over every man’s land, destroying crops and trampling down fences, going, if their vermin leads them there, with reckless violence into the sweet domestic garden of your country residences; and that no one can either stop them or punish them!  An American will believe much about the wonderful ways of his British cousin, but no American will be got to believe that till he sees it.”