ch
feverish increase. It is possible that the Americans are arriving at a
stage when they can no longer beat the records! There is a vast
difference between one of the old New York brownstone houses and one of
the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the
Times Square Building or the still more amazing Flat Iron Building,
which is said to oscillate at the top--it is so far from the
ground--there is very little difference. I hear that they are now
beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change
the appearance of New York for a long time.

I had not to endure the wooden shed in which most people landing in
America have to struggle with the Custom-house officials--a struggle as
brutal as a "round in the ring," as Paul Bourget describes it. We were
taken off the _Britannic_ in a tug, and Mr. Abbey, Laurence Barrett, and
many other friends met us--including the much-dreaded reporters.

They were not a bit dreadful, but very quick to see what kind of a man
Henry was. In a minute he was on the best of terms with them. He had on
what I used to call his best "Jingle" manner--a manner full of
refinement, bonhomie, elegance and geniality.

"Have a cigar--have a cigar." That was the first remark of Henry's,
which put every one at ease. He also wanted to be at ease and have a
good smoke. It was just the right merry greeting to the press
representatives of a nation whose sense of humor is far more to be
relied on than its sense of reverence.

"Now come on, all of you!" he said to the interviewers. He talked to
them all in a mass and showed no favoritism. It says much for his tact
and diplomacy that he did not "put his foot in it." The Americans are
suspicious of servile adulation from a stranger, yet are very sensitive
to criticism.

"These gentlemen want to have a few words with you," said Henry to me
when the reporters had done with him. Then with a mischievous expression
he whispered: "Say something pleasant! Merry and bright!"

Merry and bright! I felt it! The sense of being a stranger entering a
strange land, the rushing sense of loneliness and foreignness was
overpowering my imagination. I blew my nose hard and tried to keep back
my tears, but the first reporter said: "Can I send any message to your
friends in England?"

I answered: "Tell them I never loved 'em so much as now," and burst into
tears! No wonder that he wrote in his paper that I was "a woman of
extreme nervo