How proudly we patriots filed up the marble stairs and stared at the pictures and at each other, and acknowledged with a genuine glow of pride how well we were all dressed. I guess!
"We are a prosperous nation," I exulted, as I had some republican refreshment in the marquee under a roof of green-and-white striped bunting. How good the lemonade tasted! A patriotic lady, with a huge bow of stars and stripes tied in her buttonhole, said enthusiastically, "There is nothing like American lemonade!"
For once one rose superior to the English. One longed to recite to them the Declaration of Independence. I swelled with pride, it was all so well done, and it was my embassy, my marquee, my ices, and my Ambassador. For the first time one revelled in the joy of a worthy possession. For once the English accent was relegated where it belonged—to the background—and we Americans talked unreproved with all those delightful and familiar intonations which eighty millions of people have stamped as classic.
My only other experience of a Fourth of July reception, though there have been many distinguished and hospitable American Ministers since, was years ago. Two of us, urged on by patriotism, chartered a four-wheeler, and were deposited before a modest house, which was so dark inside, compared to the glare outside, that we stumbled up the dim stairs behind other ardent republicans, and groped for the hand of our hostess, who had apparently mislaid her smile early in the day. Then we blinked our way into a dark drawing-room, where a circle of patriots stared coldly at us.
In our search for our Minister we attached ourselves to a little procession that filed into the next room, and we found him talking with delightful affability to an Englishman. To an Englishman, and on this day of all days! To an enemy of that great country which paid him his inadequate salary, while we, his own people, stood meekly about waiting until it should suit him to notice us, and bestow on us that handshake which is the inexpensive entertainment of all republican functions.
First we stood on one foot, and then we stood on the other, and then we coughed—a deprecating, appealing cough—and finally our Minister took a lingering, fond farewell of his Englishman, and then turned to us, with a frost-bitten expression of resignation which did not encourage us to linger. We shook his limp hand, and then we jostled each other into the dining-room.
We were filled with an acute resentment, but far from declining to break bread in his house we decided to take it out of him in refreshments; but the unobtrusive simplicity of the preparations foiled our unworthy designs.
Those were simpler days, and enthusiastic republicans arrived in every variety of attire. Most popular of all was that linen "duster" with which in all its creases the travelling American loved to array himself. Sometimes he wore a coat under it and sometimes he didn't. Those were the days of paper collars and "made-up" ties, and on state occasions a cluster diamond "bosom pin." It was a stifling hot day, and we passed into the small dining-room, where a long table imprisoned three waiters. It was a question of each for himself, and I remember the father of a family clutching a plate of what we Americans call "crackers," and refusing the contents to all but his own offspring.
How we struggled for tea, and what a mercy it was that the waiters were protected from bodily assault by the table! One bestowed on me a tablespoonful of ice cream, densely flavoured with salt. For a moment I hated my country. Republican elbows poked me in every direction, and while I stood helpless in the crush I saw an elderly and stout compatriot pour the tea she had captured into the saucer, and with a placid composure proceed to drink it in that simple way.
"To think of it," a voice cried into my ear in pained and shocked surprise, "and she a relation of Longfellow's!"