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The man begins by saying he is no speaker—a fact which
should persuade him to say no more but sit promptly
dovra and appoint some one who is a speaker to do his
work for him. Then he goes stumbling along through his
imperfectly memorized speech of welcome and compli-
ments to the guest of the evening and nearly always losing
courage when he comes to one of his happy jokes, deliver-
ing it in such a shamefaced wish-I-hadn't-started-in-on-it
way as to make it impossible for the table to respond to
it in any but an artificial manner, a sort of spectral laugh-
ter that blows a chill upon the speaker and the whole
place.

It is a cruel custom and immeasurably stupid. If the
chairman would add any remark about anything in the
world, after he has finished his compliments, it would
save the guest; for anything except a compliment is text
enough, it is all a guest needs at a convivial gathering.

May 26. A most superb moon came up at sunset, huge,
round, and intensely and splendidly white, in the spaces
not occupied by the <cMan." But the new feature, the
striking feature, was this: that there didn't seem to be
any man there, or any definite figure or form, but only a
tumble and confusion of pale, vague, rich, spectral smoke-
wreaths occupying the Man's accustomed place and cover-
ing a deal more space than he ever does when he is
present.

Visited President Kruger. He was in ordinary every-
day clothes, and sat in an armchair, smoking Boer to-
bacco (the common black kind), his head and body bent
forward. He had a bad cold and a very husky voice. He
said he felt friendly toward America, and that it was his
disposition to be lenient with the American captives.

Talking of patriotism what humbug it is; it is a word
which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot

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