eridge, Gray, Wordsworth, Shelley,
Keats, and the rest. He _liked_ us, so everything we did was right to
him. He could not help being guided entirely by his feelings. If he
disliked a thing, he had no use for it. Some men can say, "I hate this
play, but of its kind it is admirable." Willie Winter could never take
that unemotional point of view.

His children came to stay with me in London. When we were all coming
home from the theatre one night after Faust (the year must have been
1886), I said to little Willie:

"Well, what do you think of the play?"

"Oh my!" said he, "it takes the cake."

"Takes the _cake_," said his little sister scornfully. "It takes the
ice-cream!"

"Won't you give me a kiss?" said Henry to the same little girl one
night.

"No, I _won't_, with all that blue stuff on your face." (He was made up
for Mephistopheles.) Then, after a pause, "But why--why don't you _take_
it!" She was only five years old at the time!

_Discovering the Southern Darkey_

For quite a while during the first tour I stayed in Washington with my
friend, Miss Olive Seward, and all the servants of that delightful
household were coloured. This was my first introduction to the negroes,
whose presence in the country makes America seem more foreign than
anything to European eyes. They are more sharply divided into high and
low types than white people, and are not in the least alike in their
types. It is safe to call any coloured man "George." They all love it,
perhaps because of George Washington; and most of them are really named
George. I never met with such perfect service as they can give. _Some_
of them are delightful. The beautiful, full voice of the "darkey" is so
attractive--so soothing, and they are so deft and gentle. Some of the
women are beautiful, and all the young appeared to me to be well-formed.
As for the babies! I washed two or three little piccaninnies when I was
in the South, and the way they rolled their gorgeous eyes at me was "too
cute," which means, in British-English, "fascinating."

At the Washington house, the servants danced a cake-walk for me--the
coloured cook, a magnificent type, who "took the cake," saying, "That
was because I chose a good handsome boy to dance with, Missie." They
sang, too. Their voices were beautiful--with such illimitable power, yet
as sweet as treacle.

The little page boy had a pet of a woolly head--Henry once gave him a
tip, a "fee," in American-English, and said: