“You have evidently suffered,” said Irving.
“No, not I; but I have known those who have. Nothing is sacred from the prying eyes and unscrupulous pens of these men. ‘You smile, old friend,’ to quote your ‘Louis the Eleventh,’ but I am not exaggerating nor setting down aught in malice. You will see! The interviewers will turn you inside out.”
“You don’t say so! Well, that will be a new sensation, at all events,” answered Irving; and, when our friend had left, he remarked, “I wonder if Americans, when they visit this country, go home and exaggerate our peculiarities as much as some of our own countrymen, after a first trip across the Atlantic, evidently exaggerate theirs.”
“There are many travellers who, in relating their experiences, think it necessary to accentuate them with exaggerated color; and then we have to make allowances for each man’s individuality.”
“How much certain of our critical friends make of that same ‘individuality,’ by the way, when they choose to call it ‘mannerism’! The interviewers, I suppose, will have a good deal to say on that subject.”
“English papers and American correspondents have given them plenty of points for personal criticism.”
“That is true. They will be clever if they can find anything new to say in that direction. Well, I don’t think it is courage, and I know it is not vanity; yet I feel quite happy about this American tour.”
A week or two later and Irving spoke the sentiments of his heart upon this subject, at the farewell banquet given to him by artistic, literary, legal, social, and journalistic London, under the presidency of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge; and it will be fitting, I trust, to close these preliminary paragraphs with his characteristic and touching good-by:—
“My Lord Chief Justice, my lords and gentlemen,—I cannot conceive a greater honor entering into the life of any man than the honor you have paid me by assembling here to-night. To look around this room and scan the faces of my distinguished hosts would stir to its depths a colder nature than mine. It is not in my power, my lords and gentlemen, to thank you for the compliment you have to-night paid me.