Among the persons whose acquaintance I had made during the voyage, some appeared to me to lend themselves to the rôle of interlocutor in the dialogue. So, directly I got back, I began to sketch out my dialogue. It was then that I experienced a curious phenomenon. With every fresh attempt I made to embody in certain characteristic personages the American idea of progress, as I had observed it in so many of my friends on that side, and the European idea, as I had many times defended it, both ideas seemed to me to evaporate, and to lose consistency and colour. That conflict of tendencies, ideas, and passions which had seemed to me so lively and so profound in my meditations in mid-ocean appeared to have melted away after I had touched the soil of old Europe. The dialogue which I was writing seemed to me cold, dead, and academic. I was torn in two directions by these difficulties, uncertain whether to abandon the enterprise, and asking myself whether American progress had not been a passing hallucination of the voyage; when towards the middle of February, 1908, I received from North America a new surprise of a still greater and more agreeable nature, in the shape of a letter from Baron Eduardo Mayor de Planches, at that time Italian Ambassador at Washington, in which he told me that President Roosevelt at his last diplomatic reception had expressed to him his wish to see me in the United States, and to have me as his guest for a few days at the White House before his presidential term ended. At any time, so courteous an invitation from a man for whose culture, intellect, and statesmanlike qualities I had so great an admiration, would have given me much pleasure. My joy was much increased, however, by the fact of its having arrived two months after my return from South America. A visit to the United States directly after one to South America was a rare stroke of luck. For, to tell the truth, in visiting Brazil and Argentina, I had seen only a fragment of the New World. But to come to know that great New-World State which by itself personifies America in the eyes of all, and to come to know the two largest states of South America into the bargain, was equivalent to saying that I had studied at least what was most important, characteristic, and deserving of study in the boundless continent which Columbus discovered. All the curiosity to which the rumours and legends current in Europe about the United States had given birth in me, and which was dominant in the recesses of my mind, awoke to life. I forgot the problem of progress, the doubts which tormented me, and the problems which I had posed to myself on my travels in Argentina, as well as the dialogue I intended to write, in my preparation for my fresh journey and for the lectures in Roman history which I was scheduled to give at the Lowell Institute, at Columbia University, and at the University of Chicago. I set to work to read as many books as I could about North America. I resumed the mantle