Meetings with King 



condolences. He was having the 

 good time which he seemed always to 

 carry with him, and to one so ignorant 

 of the English as myself he might 

 well have appeared intelligently criti- 

 cal, though not censorious, of them. 

 They amused him, by their novelty of 

 type and their frank naturalness, in 

 the same degree if not the same kind 

 as the wild or wilding children of the 

 Pacific Slope and of the intervening 

 alkaline regions. No American of his 

 intellectual gifts and wide human 

 experience ever got more, I should 

 think, of the good of a sojourn among 

 the English, which was finally ex- 

 tended almost to the despair of the 

 friends wishing him home again. It 

 was charming to hear his philosophy 

 of them, as shrewd and penetrating 

 as it was humorous and unfinal. 



It was early in his visit, I believe, 

 that I met him at a dinner, given by 

 an American publisher, which was re- 

 144 



