"We have all read, at least I have, with great appreciation, coupled with no small degree of amusement, Mrs. Margot Asquith's 'Autobiography.' I particularly enjoyed it because it gave her impressions of many people whom I have met and known.
"Mrs. Asquith is the wife of the great man who was the prime minister of England at the outbreak of the World War. She is here to-day in a city which bears the name of that prime minister of England who held the helm of state during the Napoleonic wars.
"I have the honour of presenting Mrs. Margot Asquith, wife of the Right Honourable Herbert Henry Asquith. She is one of the most famous women of England."
Hampered by the knowledge that we were to catch the night train to Rochester, and inexperienced in timing what I have to say, I found when I sat down that I had cut my lecture short by half an hour. To make up for this, and encouraged by people in the front row reaching up to shake my hand, I invited them to come on to the platform. They trooped up in large numbers and I held an informal reception which met with unexpected success.
We drove in silence to the station. I had a conviction which my secretary did not attempt to contradict that I had been a failure. Mr. Horton said he feared the news of my curtailed lecture might reach the influential press and prejudice those who might want to hear me in the towns in which I was booked to speak. Knowing in my heart that I had on every occasion received more praise than I deserved, and being of a temperament that is not knocked out by failure, I tried to cheer him up while the nigger was arranging my bed, but without the smallest success.
The trains, both in the States and in the Dominion, have every fault; those in Canada being even worse than in the United States. If you travel by day you are one of twenty-four men, women, and children who sit on hard revolving chairs eyeing one another. You cannot stretch your limbs, or smoke a cigarette, and while your ears are deafened by shrieking babies, your legs are scorched by boiling pipes. If you are rich enough, you may get a drawing room, but they do not have them on every train. When you travel by night men and women are on top of one another, buttoned behind an avenue of green cotton curtains. You cannot get your hot water bottles filled, or have tea in the morning. While staggering to your private berth between the leaps of the locomotive you are lucky if you do not fall over the protruding feet of your fellow travellers, or find yourself sitting on the face of a sleeping lady lying perdue behind the hangings. Privacy is unknown, and though I have travelled for thousands of miles I have not yet met the train that, unless you have the balance of a ballet girl, will not give you concussion of the spine or brain.
After a sleepless night we arrived at Rochester where I seized the morning papers. Thanks to a charming reporter, Mr. C. M. Vining, who had come a long way to hear me speak at Pittsburgh, I had an excellent review.
My stay was so short at Rochester, where I lectured under the auspices of the Press Club, that I had no time to form any impressions of the place, but the people were all very good to me.
On the 26th we met Mr. Horton's mother at Buffalo, a refined, charming, old lady, who travelled in the train to Toronto with us.
Meeting Mr. Vining in the passage I thought if I brought him into our drawing room it would give my secretary an opportunity of speaking to his mother, and invited him to join us. We had an excellent talk and I told him that, for the first time in my life, I had seen a "flapper." While waiting in the sunny street outside Buffalo station, I had seen two young, short-skirted giggling girls, walking with their admirers who were armed with kodaks. One of the young men threw a girl over his shoulder who stretched out her legs while the other photographed her. I added that, while praying that I would never again be interviewed upon the subject, I would be in a better position to answer my ardent questioners in the future.