ething."

After a while the butler again approached the admiral and said:
"My lord, the champagne is all gone."

"Well," said Lord Charles, "start in on cider."

It was a merry company, and they all caught on to the situation.
The result was one of the most hilarious, enjoyable, and original
entertainments of my life. It lasted late, and everybody with
absolute sincerity declared he or she had had the best time ever.

I was asked to meet Lord John Fisher, in a way a rival of
Lord Beresford. Both were exceedingly able and brilliant officers
and men of achievement, but they were absolutely unlike; one had
all the characteristics of the Celt and the other of the Saxon.

One of the most interesting things in Lord Fisher's talk, especially
in view of later developments, was his description of the
discoveries and annexations to the British Empire, made by the
British navy. In regard to this he said: "The British navy had
been acquiring positions of strategic importance to the safety and
growth of the empire from time immemorial, and some fool of a
prime minister on a pure matter of sentiment is always giving away
to our possible enemies one or the other of these advantageous
positions." He referred especially to Heligoland, the gift of
which to Germany had taken place not long before. If Heligoland,
fortified like Gibraltar, had remained in the possession of the
British Government, Germany would not have ventured upon the late war.

Lord Fisher exemplified what I have often met with in men who have
won eminent distinction in some career, whose great desire was
to have fame in another and entirely different one. Apparently
he wished his friends and those he met to believe that he was
the best storyteller in the world; that he had the largest stock
of original anecdotes and told them better than anybody else.
I found that he was exceedingly impatient and irritable when any
one else started the inevitable "that reminds me," and he was
intolerant with the story the other was trying to tell. But I
discovered, also, that most of his stories, though told with great
enthusiasm, were very familiar, or, as we Americans would
say, "chestnuts."

During my summer vacations I spent two weeks or more at Homburg,
the German watering-place. It was at that time the most interesting
resort on the continent. The Prince of Wales, afterwards
King Edward VII, was always there, and his sister, the Dowager
Empress of Germany, had