Ahlwardt, however, was impervious to advice or warnings. At his first big meeting in the Cooper Union Hall, arriving late, I noticed at once two things: the seats were packed with Jews, while almost as many policemen stood about waiting; and the reporters’ tables underneath the platform showed several open umbrellas. Both, I knew, were ominous signs. Ahlwardt himself, fat, beaming, in full evening dress, was already haranguing the huge audience. At first he was suave and gentle, even mealy-mouthed, but before long his prejudices mastered him and his language changed. Up rose a member of the audience and advised him angrily to go back to Germany. The police ejected the interrupter. Others took his place. Then suddenly the fusillade began--and up went the reporters’ umbrellas! A flying egg caught the speaker full on his white shirt-front, another yellowed his dazzling white waistcoat, a third smashed over his fat face. Pandemonium reigned, during which the German melted out of the landscape and disappeared from his first and last anti-semite meeting in Noo York City. He attempted a little propaganda from the safe distance of Hoboken, N.J., but the Press campaign against him was so violent and covered him with such ridicule, that he very soon took steamer back to his Berlin. Every little detail of this incident, were it worth the telling, I could give accurately. There was no reason to be “detached,” unless the protection of the _World_ man’s umbrella comes under that description. It was somewhere about this time, too, that another trivial incident occurred, refusing to be forgotten. It, again, increased the respect shown to me by the staff of the paper--Americans being truly democratic!--though it did not increase my salary. A belted earl left his card on me. Coming in breathless from some assignment, I saw McCloy staring at me. “Is this for _you_?” he asked sarcastically, handing me a visiting-card. A brother-in-law, “His Excellency” into the bargain, “Governor of an Australian Province” to which he was then on his way, had climbed those narrow spiral stairs and asked for me. The letters after his name alone were enough to produce a commotion in that democratic atmosphere.... He was staying at the Brevoort House, and he certainly behaved “like a man,” thought Kay and I, as we enjoyed more than one good dinner at his expense in the hotel. Proud of me he had certainly no cause to be, but if he felt ashamed, equally, he gave no sign of it. He even spoke on my behalf to Paul Dana, the editor-proprietor’s son, who assured him that I was “a bright fellow”--a description the staff managed to get hold of somehow and applied to me ever afterwards. His brief visit, both because of its kindness and its general good effect, stand out, at any rate, in the “bright fellow’s” memory. Like Dufferin in the Hub, he fired a shot for me.