I maintain that American interviewers are extremely courteous and obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful reporters of what you say to them. Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind whether those who have so much to say against interviewing in America have ever been asked to be interviewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger. I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in modern journalism; but I do not object to being interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I will go down at once, and be interviewed. * * * * * _Midnight._ The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went through the operation like a man. After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in him a friend ready to welcome me. The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, rather below middle height, with a beautifully chiseled head. In every one of the features you can detect the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and refined feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him again. He has finished his "Library of American Literature," a gigantic work of erudite criticism and judicious compilation, which he undertook a few years ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. These eleven volumes form a perfect national monument, a complete cyclopædia of American literature, giving extracts from the writings of every American who has published anything for the last three hundred years (1607-1890). [Illustration: THE INTERVIEWERS.] On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd, the author of "Cathedral Days," "Glorinda," "The Republic of the Future," and other charming books, and one of the brightest conversationalists it has ever been my good fortune to meet. After an hour's chat with her, I had forgotten all about the _grippe_, and all other more or less imaginary miseries. I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went to the Union League Club to dine with General Horace Porter. The general possesses a rare and most happy combination of brilliant flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet, American humor. This charming _causeur_ and _conteur_ tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do; he never misses fire. He assured me at table that the copyright bill will soon be passed, for, he added, "we have now a pure and pious Administration. At the White House they open their oysters with prayer." The conversation fell on American society, or, rather, on American Societies. The highest and lowest of these can be distinguished by the use of _van_. "The blue blood of America put it before their names, as _Van Nicken_; political society puts it after, as _Sullivan_." O VAN-ITAS VAN-ITATUM! Time passed rapidly in such delightful company.