We travelled that night to Columbus in the same sort of horrible train—shaky, hot, and stopping outside before jerking into the stations. Upon our arrival, a stranger came up to us on the platform and said he hoped we would let him take us and our luggage to any place we liked; that he had loved my book and was going to hear my lecture. We were delighted to accept his invitation and were whizzed off to the hotel. Mr. Jeffries, the owner of the motor, was more than kind and enthusiastic. I tried to distinguish his handsome face in a ballroom where I spoke in the evening, but he was in the gallery, and I was too nervous to look much about me.
Ex-Governor Campbell made a witty introductory speech and encouraged my listeners to ask me questions. When it was all over, I was surrounded by various ladies and gentlemen of the audience who introduced themselves and each other to me and asked if I would not eat ices and drink punch, but I was dropping with fatigue and even my handsome friend who was full of congratulations, could not prevent me from staggering off to bed.
I had received a wire from my manager begging me to go by the 7 a.m. train next morning to Chicago in time to see the reporters in the evening. The prospect of this gave me a sleepless night, especially as I was disturbed, first at midnight by a messenger boy with an album which he wished me to sign, and again at two in the morning by the night watchman who said I had neglected to lock my door. I used un-parliamentary language, telling him that nothing would induce me to lock my door, and after an unsuccessful attempt to settle down, I turned on the light and read "If Winter Comes."
The originality and pathos of this wonderful study reduced me to tears and, more dead than alive, at 5.30 a.m. I told my maid I would have my bath.
The reporters at Chicago were very civil and, interspersed with flash-lights, I got through the interviews as well as I could. One of the young ladies, following me to the lift, said:
"I wish you hadn't been so charming and polite. I would like you to have just rushed at me and pulled my hair out so that I could have got the story."
I looked at her in surprise and disgust as Mr. Horton elbowed me into the lift.
I dined that night with a very old friend of mine, Count Minotto, and met the first woman of real beauty that I have seen since I came here. Mrs. Minotto walked into the room with long white arms and a transparently pale face; her dark hair brushed in waves off her forehead was knotted loosely at the back of her neck, and her beautiful eyes glowed with welcome. We talked à trois for three hours and before going away she took me into her night nursery. The nurse woke up, but her lady told her not to move, and after looking at a handsome little boy, she glided to the side of a white cradle. Very tall, in a clinging black crepe dress, I was struck by the beauty of her attitude, and the tenderness of her expression as, leaning across the cot, she removed the coverlet for me to see her little sleeping baby.
I lectured the next night to the biggest and most intelligent audience I had faced since Boston, and when it was over people came on to the stage to congratulate me and ask for my autograph.
On the morning of the 22nd, having asked to see the big Military Hospital, a friend of Mr. Horton's—who had been his secretary during his Foreign Office work in Paris—took us out to see the Speedway Hospital.