" (I think he said the Mississippi). "You will find
them," he said to me, "brilliant, witty, filled with repartee." He
suggested that I should send him back, as far as words could express
it, some of this brilliance. I was very glad to be able to do this,
although I fear that the results were not at all what he had
anticipated. Still, I held conversations with these people and I
gave him, in all truthfulness, the result. Sir James Barrie said,
"This is really very exceptional weather for this time of year."
Cyril Maude said, "And so a Martini cocktail is merely gin and
vermouth." Ian Hay said, "You'll find the underground ever so handy
once you understand it."
I have a lot more of these repartees that I could insert here if
it was necessary. But somehow I feel that it is not.
IV. -- A Clear View of the Government and Politics of England
A LOYAL British subject like myself in dealing with the government
of England should necessarily begin with a discussion of the
monarchy. I have never had the pleasure of meeting the King,--except
once on the G.T.R. platform in Orillia, Ontario, when he was the
Duke of York and I was one of the welcoming delegates of the town
council. No doubt he would recall it in a minute.
But in England the King is surrounded by formality and circumstance.
On many mornings I waited round the gates of Buckingham Palace but I
found it quite impossible to meet the King in the quiet sociable way
in which one met him in Orillia.
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