ost, therefore, according to my own rule, he had a
right to do the talking, and it was my honorable duty to intrude no
interruptions or other improvements except upon invitation; and of
course it could be my turn some day--some day, on some friendly
visit of inspection to America, it might be my pleasure and
distinction to have him as guest at my table; then I would give him
a rest and a quiet time.

"In one way there was a difference between his table and mine-for
instance, atmosphere; the guests stood in awe of him, and naturally
they conferred that feeling upon me, for, after all, I am only
human, although I regret it. When a guest answered a question he
did it with a deferential voice and manner; he did not put any
emotion into it, and he did not spin it out, but got it out of his
system as quickly as he could, and then looked relieved. The
Emperor was used to this atmosphere, and it did not chill his blood;
maybe it was an inspiration to him, for he was alert, brilliant, and
full of animation; also he was most gracefully and felicitously
complimentary to my books--and I will remark here that the happy
phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts and the
happy delivery of it another. I once mentioned the high compliment
which he paid to the book 'Old Times on the Mississippi'; but there
were others, among them some high praise of my description in 'A
Tramp Abroad' of certain striking phases of German student life.

"Fifteen or twenty minutes before the dinner ended the Emperor made
a remark to me in praise of our generous soldier pensions; then,
without pausing, he continued the remark, not speaking to me, but
across the table to his brother, Prince Heinrich. The Prince
replied, endorsing the Emperor's view of the matter. Then I
followed with my own view of it. I said that in the beginning our
government's generosity to the soldier was clear in its intent and
praiseworthy, since the pensions were conferred upon soldiers who
had earned them, soldiers who had been disabled in the war and could
no longer earn a livelihood for themselves and their families, but
that the pensions decreed and added later lacked the virtue of a
clean motive, and had, little by little, degenerated into a wider
and wider and more and more offensive system of vote-purchasing, and
was