In a speech in the Senate on Hawaiian affairs, Senator Depew of New York told this story:
When Queen Liliuokalani was in England during the English queen's jubilee, she was received at Buckingham Palace. In the course of the remarks that passed between the two queens, the one from the Sandwich Islands said that she had English blood in her veins.
"How so?" inquired Victoria.
"My ancestors ate Captain Cook."
Signor Marconi, in an interview in Washington, praised American democracy.
"Over here," he said, "you respect a man for what he is himself—not for what his family is—and thus you remind me of the gardener in Bologna who helped me with my first wireless apparatus.
"As my mother's gardener and I were working on my apparatus together a young count joined us one day, and while he watched us work the count boasted of his lineage.
"The gardener, after listening a long while, smiled and said:
"'If you come from an ancient family, it's so much the worse for you sir; for, as we gardeners say, the older the seed the worse the crop.'"