Zangwill parted with me, smilingly. "I am but one of lower orders," said he, "but I shall have an eye to you during dinner."
My left-hand neighbor at the table was a short, gray, gloomy individual whose name I failed to catch, but the man on my right was Henry Norman, of the London Chronicle, and after we had established friendly relations I leaned to him and whispered, "Who is the self-absorbed, gloomy chieftain on my left?"
"That," said he, "is Henry M. Stanley."
"What!" I exclaimed, "not Henry M. Stanley of Africa?"
"Yes, Stanley of Uganda."
It seemed a pity to sit in silence beside this great explorer, who had been one of my boyish heroes, and I decided to break the ice of his reserve in some way. Turning to him suddenly I asked, "Sir Henry, how do you pronounce the name of that poisonous African fly—is it Teetsie or Tettsie?"
He brightened up at once. I was not so great a bore as he feared. After he had given me a great deal of information about this fly, and the sleeping sickness, I asked him what he thought of the future of the continent, to which he responded with growing geniality. We were off!
After a proper interval I volunteered some valuable data concerning the mosquitoes and flies I had encountered on my recent trip into the wilderness of British Columbia. He became interested in me. "Oh! You've been to the Klondike!"
This quite broke down his wall. Thereafter he listened respectfully to all that I could tell him of the black flies, the huge caribou flies, the orange-colored flies, and the mosquitoes who worked in two shifts (the little gray ones in hot sunlight, the big black ones at night), and by the time the speaking began we were on the friendliest terms. "What a bore these orators are!" I said, and in this judgment he instantly agreed.
Sitting there in the faces of hundreds of English authors, I achieved a peaceful satisfaction with my outfit. A sense of being entirely inconspicuous, a realization that I was committed to convention, produced in me an air of perfect ease. By conforming I had become as much a part of the scene as Sir Walter or the waiter who shifted my plates and filled my glass. "Zangwill is right," I said, "the clawhammer coat is in truth the most democratic of garments."