Once more, the scene of my anecdote is at table, a long table in a club, where men came to lunch. All were Englishmen, except a single stranger. He was an American, who through the kindness of one beloved member of that club, no longer living now, had received a card to the club. The American, upon sitting down alone in this company, felt what I suppose that many of us feel in like circumstances: he wished there were somebody there who knew him and could nod to him. Nevertheless, he was spoken to, asked questions about various of his fellow countrymen, and made at home. Presently, however, an elderly member who had been silent and whom I will designate as being of the Dr. Samuel Johnson type, said: “You seem to be having trouble in your packing houses over in America?”
We were.
“Very disgraceful, those exposures.”
They were. It was May, 1906.
“Your Government seems to be doing something about it. It’s certainly scandalous. Such abuses should never have been possible in the first place. It oughtn’t to require your Government to stop it. It shouldn’t have started.”
“I fancy the facts aren’t quite so bad as that sensational novel about Chicago makes them out,” said the American. “At least I have been told so.”
“It all sounds characteristic to me,” said the Sam Johnson. “It’s quite the sort of thing one expects to hear from the States.”
“It is characteristic,” said the American. “In spite of all the years that the sea has separated us, we’re still inveterately like you, a bullying, dishonest lot—though we’ve had nothing quite so bad yet as your opium trade with China.”
The Sam Johnson said no more.
At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of Americans and one Englishman, a man of note, bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the company what one could do in the way of amusement in the evening in London.