I don't think we took the news very seriously. We are, as I have said, inured to wonders and inclined to let science do her worst. We belong to that class of people who, although they keep silent on the subject, hate science very heartily. My friend trumpets science loudly enough at times, I know; but he hates her in his heart, for he loves children and birds and flowers, and the colours of the distant hills when evening falls. And like us, he admires Miss Fraenkel, perhaps the most unscientific creature in the United States. He feeds her passion for details of English life in the most shameless way. On this particular evening he entranced her with a description of the Scottish custom of sitting on the plinth of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and welcoming the new year with bottles of whisky. Every Scotsman south of the Tweed was under oath to appear in the churchyard in kilts and tartan-plaid at midnight. Most of them, he added, wore red beards. Miss Fraenkel's fine hazel eyes grew round as she visualized this frightful throng gathered among the graves of the churchyard. It occurred to me that it only showed, after all, how difficult it is to convey in words a just notion of a foreign land, and how easy it is for "travellers' tales" to become incredible fabrications. How would the quiet townships of rural England, where the names of people and places go back to Saxon days, credit us if we told them of our tavern known as Slovitzsky's, where citizens, of all the races of Europe, sang "Auld lang Syne"? Not in kilts, it is true, but in costumes even more surprising to the aforesaid quiet townships. We get a good deal of fun out of Miss Fraenkel, no doubt, but it may be that she, without ever giving away the secret, gets a good deal of fun out of us. Sometimes there is a whimsical glint in her hazel eyes that makes me reflect.... We were chatting quietly, after we had left her, full of good resolutions, and we were climbing Pine Street, the deep snow making the passage difficult, when we heard the strange sound of the rejoicing in New York, twenty miles away. And it was without any thought of coming peril, without any thought of our neighbours, that we paused at the top of the ridge and looked across the valley. Indeed, we spoke of a previous New Year when we had sallied out from our flat and joined the tumultuous citizens in the streets. Above us was the dark blue sky of a wintry midnight, obscured here and there by indeterminate blotches of moving cloud, and far away to the eastward lay a long, low glare pierced by a single white light, the lantern of the Metropolitan Tower in New York.