ero, recalling these occasions. "In what special
quality or qualities lay the secret of his charm and influence? Surely
in his simplicity and transparent honesty, and in the possession of a
disposition which, without the smallest loss of dignity, was responsive
and affectionate. Distinguished American Ambassadors will come and go,
and will in their turn win esteem and admiration. But none, I venture to
say, will efface the recollection of Walter Page from the minds of those
who were privileged to gain his friendship."

One aspect of Page that remains fixed in the memory of his associates is
his unwearied industry with the pen. His official communications and his
ordinary correspondence Page dictated; but his personal letters he wrote
with his own hand. He himself deplored the stenographer as a deterrent
to good writing; the habit of dictating, he argued, led to wordiness and
general looseness of thought. Practically all the letters published in
these volumes were therefore the painstaking work of Page's own pen. His
handwriting was so beautiful and clear that, in his editorial days, the
printers much preferred it as "copy" to typewritten matter. This habit
is especially surprising in view of the Ambassador's enormous epistolary
output. It must be remembered that the letters included in the present
book are only a selection from the vast number that he wrote during his
five years in England; many of these letters fill twenty and thirty
pages of script; the labour involved in turning them out; day after day,
seems fairly astounding. Yet with Page this was a labour of love. All
through his Ambassadorship he seemed hardly contented unless he had a
pen in his hand. As his secretaries would glance into his room, there
they would see the Ambassador bending over his desk-writing, writing,
eternally writing; sometimes he would call them in, and read what he had
written, never hesitating to tear up the paper if their unfavourable
criticisms seemed to him well taken. The Ambassador kept a desk also in
his bedroom, and here his most important correspondence was attended to.
Page's all-night self-communings before his wood fire have already been
described, and he had another nocturnal occupation that was similarly
absorbing. Many a night, after returning late from his office or from
dinner, he would put on his dressing gown, sit at his bedroom desk, and
start pouring forth his inmost thoughts in letters to the President,
Colonel Hous