My host now appeared to enforce the request. I protested. “My dear fellow, I can dine but once in twenty-four hours; dinner to me is an event; luncheon is fatal to dinner—takes off the edge of your appetite, and then you are unfit to do it justice.”
“Have it as you will,” he replied, and off I went. Returning, I donned my dress suit, and feeling as hungry as a hound, went to the drawing-room to await dinner. Seven came, half after seven, and still no announcement of that meal. I felt an inward sinking. At eight the butler announced “Tea is served.”
“Good heavens!” I muttered to myself; “I have lost dinner,” and woefully went in to tea. I can drink tea at my breakfast, but that suffices; I can never touch it a second time in twenty-four hours. I think my host took in the situation, and to intensify my suffering, walked over to me, tapping me on the back, exclaiming:
“My dear boy, in this house we never dine on Sunday.”
“Why in the plague, then,” I thought, “did you ask me up here on a fast day? However,” I said to myself, “I will make it up on bread and butter.” In we went to tea, and a tea indeed it was; what the French would call a “Souper dinatoire,” the English, a “high tea,” a combination of a heavy lunch, a breakfast, and tea. No hot dishes; but every cold delicacy you could dream of; a sort of “whipping the devil around the stump.” No dinner, a gorgeous feast at tea.
Down the river the next morning we went to West Point, every moment enjoyable, and reached the Commandant’s house. As General Scott was presenting Colonel Delafield’s guests to the Prince I approached the General, asking him to present me to his Royal Highness. A giant as he was in height, he bent down his head to me, and asked sharply, “What name, sir?” I gave him my name, but at the sound of “Mc,” not thinking it distinguished enough, he quietly said, “Pass on, sir,” and I subsequently was presented by the Duke of Newcastle.