274 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



but for the purposes of the meeting he thought it 

 necessary to be in New York itself, and as he had invited 

 all the previous presidents who were attending the 

 meeting to be his guests, there was a large party. The 

 meeting was to have been opened by President Taft, 

 but unfortunately he had an accident or illness and his 

 doctors forbade him to travel to New York. With 

 truly American promptitude and resource, the arrange- 

 ments were changed, and reversing the Mahommedan 

 tradition, as Mr. Taft could not come to the Congress, 

 the mountain that is to say the Congress went to him. 



All had to be settled very quickly, special trains 

 arranged for, and accommodation provided for the large 

 number of members, but it was done most successfully, 

 and the visitors had the pleasure of seeing Washington, 

 spending an afternoon at White House and a morning 

 at Mount Vernon, the home of General Washington, 

 before starting its business at New York. 



The Congress had one experience which it would have 

 been glad to miss a severe heat wave. The strangers 

 felt it a good deal, but the hosts even more, as their 

 work of organising was heavy and constant, and one of 

 the kindest and most active died a few weeks later of 

 typhoid, which he had caught during that time. Every- 

 thing was done to make the occasion pleasant and 

 memorable ; perhaps the day that stands out most 

 was an excursion by steamer up the Hudson, where 

 the English guests saw, with the greatest interest, places 

 long familiar by name, the Palisades, West Point, 



