“Yes, but a thing to be insulted, not like his to be painted on the lids of snuff-boxes, as souvenirs for kings.
“Or if that does not amuse you, Mrs. Jones can introduce you to some of the prettiest girls you ever saw.”
“Big, strong, fat, and healthy, I suppose, with red faces looking as if they had just been washed with soap and water.”
“Well, then we might have some golf, and if you will give me half a stroke, I will play you $5 a hole and $50 on the game. Or if that is too rich for your blood, I will play you dollar Nassau. In fact, Jack, I will do anything to get this foolish idea out of your head. These people can’t see a joke at any time, but to try one now might put you into a very serious if not dangerous position. Now you go along and see Lawrence, as I have to look after some American refugees who are waiting in the outer office. You will dine with us tonight, of course.”
Lawrence Stuyvesant, to whom the Secretary had referred, appeared at the door at that moment and beckoned to Edestone. He was one of those irrepressible Americans, born with an absolute lack of respect for anything that suggested convention, at home in any company and showing absolutely no preference. He would be found joking with the stokers in the engine room when he might be walking with the Admiral on the quarter-deck, flirting with a deaf old Duchess when he might be supping with the leader of the ballet. With a sense of humour that would have made his fortune on the stage, he spoke half-a-dozen languages and a dozen dialects. He could imitate the Kaiser or give a Yiddish dialect to a Chinaman. Light-hearted to a fault, he would make a joke at anyone’s expense, preferably his own. An entertaining chap, but a rolling stone that could roll up hill or skip lightly over the surface of a placid lake with equal facility. He had already run through two considerable fortunes, and had been almost everything from a camel driver to a yacht’s captain. Now he imagined himself to be a diplomat.
“Behold the dreamer cometh,” he said in Yiddish dialect as Edestone approached, and grasping the inventor by both hands, dragged him into the other room, and began to ask questions so fast that a Chicago reporter, had he heard, would have died of sheer mortification.
After he had gotten all the information that he could pump, pull, and squeeze out of Edestone, he shook his head discouragingly.
“I am darn glad to see you, old chap,” he said, “but I am sorry to hear that you have come over to try and reason with this bunch of nuts. Don’t you know they are so damn conceited that if you were to tell them that every time you look at a German you see two men, they would believe you; and then as if they hated to lie to themselves, they would say perhaps it was an optical illusion. Tell them that God did not create anyone but the Germans and that he left the rest of the world to the students in his office, and they will give you a smile of assent.” Edestone smiled indulgently. “Tell them that when the Kaiser frowns every wheel in the United States stops and refuses to move until reassured by the German papers that it is but the frown of an indulgent father and not the thunder of their future War Lord, and they will give a knowing look. Tell them that only German is taught in our public schools, and that any child who does not double-cross himself at the mention of the name of any of the North German Lloyd steamers is taken out and shot, and they will say, ‘Ach so?’
“But just you pull something about what a hit Brother Henry made in the United States, especially with the navy, and what a swell chance he would have of being elected Admiral when Dewey resigns, then look out! Get under your umbrella and sit perfectly still until the storm passes. Keep well down in the trenches and don’t expose anything that you do not want sent to the cleaners. For when one of these Dutchmen begins to splutter, there is nothing short of the U-29 that can stand the tidal wave of beer and sauerkraut which has been lying in wait for some unsuspecting neutral in their flabby jowls like nuts in a squirrel’s cheek. They back-fire, skip, short-circuit, and finally blow up, and if you don’t throw on a bucket or two of flattery quick, you’ve got a duel on your hands, which for an American in this country means that you get it going and coming.”
Edestone, knowing Lawrence well, took what he said largely as a joke; but from his own observations and from what Jones had told him he felt convinced that there did not exist the kindest feeling for Americans in Berlin. Brushing all this aside, he turned to Lawrence with a businesslike air: