"Then why do you do it?"
"Well, sir, I have made up my mind that I had rather be ill now and then than always taking care of myself."
"Oh, you think that now, but when the gout comes what do you think then?"
"Sir, if you will ask me then I will tell you. I do not anticipate."
The Prince laughed and everybody laughed. And Lord Hartington, for all his gout, lived to be seventy-four, one of the truest Englishmen of his time or of any time.
Among the Americans who were presented to the Prince at Homburg were Mr. Depew and Mark Twain. I was not in Homburg when Mr. Depew first came, but I asked one of the Prince's equerries to arrange the presentation for Mr. Depew, and I wrote to Lady Cork begging her to do what she could for him. So the formalities were duly transacted. The Prince took a liking to the American, asked him to dine, put him on his right hand, and listened to his stories with delight. He told me afterward that Depew was a new experience. He asked him again and again, and the next year also; I believe several years, or as long as Depew went to Homburg. The Prince said:
"Depew's stories were not all good, but he told the bad ones so well that they were better than the good."
My letter to Lady Cork had a fate I did not foresee, though I ought to have foreseen. When she told the Prince that I had written her about Depew she had my manuscript in her hand. "Is that Smalley's letter? May I see it?" asked the Prince; took it and read the whole. It happened that I was staying at the time with one of her married daughters, and there was a deal good of family gossip in the letter. When the Prince handed it back there was in his eyes a gleam of that humour so often seen there, and he said:
"Now I know some of the things I have been wanting to know."