how it is with professional
speakers, but with the amateur the chairman and the audience make the
speech. The Rev. Swan Wiers introduced me in an address of eloquence for
which I thanked him warmly.

I arrived in Providence next day to be interviewed by three young
ladies. After the usual questions upon Princess Mary's underwear and the
"flappers," one of them said she had come to ask me about England's
greatest man. I told her we had so many that I would be grateful if she
could indicate the one she meant.

"Will you tell me who your great men are?" she answered.

"Well," I said, "we have Hardy, Kipling, Lord Morley, Lord Grey, Lord
Buckmaster, and Mr. Balfour."

"Oh, no!" she replied, "I want to hear all about Lloyd George."

"I fear you will have to read about him yourself," I said, "and if you
can wade through the daily columns of films, flappers, murders and
headlines, over here, to our anonymous gossip about Downing Street in my
country, you may discover what you want to know."

The other ladies intervened when she retorted:

"Then you refuse to tell me?" and as--the electric light having gone out
all over the hotel--we were squinting at a single candle, I thought it
as well to put an end to their intelligent questions.

The Providence audience consisted mostly of empty chairs, but it was an
enormous hall and when the lecture was over a few of the five hundred
listeners came up to ask me to sign my name in various albums and on
slips of paper. They said:

"You have given us such a wonderful lecture to-night that you must come
back here." To which I replied smilingly:

"Never in this world! To speak for an hour and fifteen minutes to people
who never clap is like hitting one's head against a wall." At which one
of the ladies said:

"You are quite right, Mrs. Asquith, there is great apathy and lack of
manners in Providence."

"Why should you clap," I said, "if you are not interested?" At this they
all protested.

"We were afraid of missing a word of what we were enjoying," said one
charming woman, to which I replied:

"I would have stood as still as a statue if one of you had thought of
cheering me!"

We took the midnight train to New York where we arrived at six the next
morning, and I felt that I was returning home.

On March 8, the _New York Times_ published on its front page:

"LORD LEE DEFENDS AMERICAN YOUNG
WOMEN

"Mrs. Asquith's Charges Cruel, Ludicrous,