NOTEBOOK

honor and reverence. To relieve pain—that is an exalted
office; and when a prince does it, and doesn't need to do
it, it makes the princely dignity ideal.

It was a charming twenty minutes we spent there. There
are princes which I cast in the Echte (genuine) princely
mold, and they make me regret—again—that I am not a
prince myself. It is not a new regret but a very old one.
I have never been properly and humbly satisfied with my
condition. I am a democrat only on principle, not by in-
stinct—nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they
are, but this world is grievously given to lying.

When we got back home we found out that we were
the Americans who were expected, after all—but at two
o'clock, not 12:30. But no matter, nothing could have
improved the episode. I was sure we were the wrong ones,
but there was nothing to make me sorry it had happened.

At the hotel they found a written invitation
for them to come to the Palace. Mark Twain
appears to have entirely forgotten how rabidly
democratic he had been when writing of King
Arthur's Court, some ten years earlier.

March 18, '98. On the I5th I heard by accident, through
a chance remark of Miss Levitus, that the American
patents on Szczepanik's designing-machine were not sold.
I sent a note at once to Miss Levitus and asked her to
arrange an interview for next night, here in the Hotel
Metropole, in our room. I spent the i6th in gathering
American statistics at our Consulate-General (the young-
est were 18 years old) and British ones, through Mr.
Wm. Lavino, correspondent of the London Times: he got
others for me by telephoning the British Consul.

I ciphered on the date and wrote eleven pages of ques-
tions; and when the inventor and his capitalist arrived
at nine with Miss Levitus and Dr. Winternitz, I was
ready for business and rich with my new learning. My

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