cat was the cause of it all." This lyric
being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my
astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr.
Kipling's illness, setting forth how

"His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled him
through."

They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they were in the worst possible
taste. So far as the reciter was concerned, they were absolutely
insincere clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them with
rapture; and the very fact that an astute caterer should serve up this
particular form of clap-trap showed how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling
had permeated even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To an
Englishman, nothing can be more touching than to find on every hand this
enthusiastic affection for the poet of the Seven Seas--a writer, too,
who has not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities, and has,
by sheer force of genius, lived down a good deal of unpopularity.

For the moment, neither President McKinley nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie
with him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral
Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one
living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon,
where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the
Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year,
President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was
confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I have
forgotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, "but if you will look at
me you will see that I am the President." "If you were George Dewey
himself," was the reply, "you shouldn't get by here without the
pass-word." This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it is
aptly brought up to date.[B]

We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a cross-town car, and are
presently pushing at the revolving doors--a draught-excluding
plate-glass turn-stile--of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and
labyrinthine. A short colloquy with the clerk at the bureau, and we find
ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered elevator, whizzing aloft to the
thirteenth floor. Not the top floor--far from it. If you could slice off
the stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top of an egg,
and plant them down in Europe, they would of themselves make a biggish
hotel according to our standards. This first