We went to see the historical sights of London, and you were particularly moved in Westminster Abbey. As we stood in the corridor outside, you made a solemn prediction to this effect: “Twenty or thirty years from now, when Germany conquers France, as she surely will unless England has the sense to step in in time—she will then try to conquer England. This she can do, unless America comes to the rescue. When Americans face the destruction of Westminster Abbey, they _will_ come to the rescue. Then at last the war of 1775 will come to an end.” On one occasion, while entering the city by the railway (I was feeling fine from a reinforcement of several real old Scotch whiskies), I took out a coin, a penny, and said: “This is a wonderful country. I no sooner get here than for a couple of our copper cents (with a picture of an Indian, badly done, upon the face) I receive this large, weighty, and dignified coin of pure bronze upon which is a bas-relief of Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.” From the other side of the compartment leaned forward a retired British major—a man you could see had evidently conquered with difficulty his childish habit of dropping his aitches. In a gentle, deprecating voice, he answered: “My dear young sir, permit me to hope that during your stay with us here you will refrain from any desire to make a mock of our holier institutions. Do not, I pray you, carp at Our Gracious Majesty.” He did not get down on his belly on the floor—only mentally—but I had the awful feeling that he was longing to do so. Queen Victoria (and that was long before the admirable book by Lytton Strachey) could never produce such an effect upon a sane Yankee. Speaking of aitches, I once told Leslie Stephen that every Englishman was careless with them, even himself. He roared and insisted that only the lower classes dropped them or added them. I then asked him to say, “White witch which I met on the Isle of Wight.” Of course he stumbled. This softening of the aitch to a point where it seems to disappear is a habit peculiar to the inbred Britisher—just as the “r” is to the Bostonian and the “d” to the Spaniard. I once discussed this with an educated and learned Englishman from the commoner class. He was only a graduate of the College of London, but knew his Latin and Greek better than any American and had been spending his time teaching the children of the vulgar rich of Pittsburgh. He insisted that the habit of dropping the aitches was prevalent in those parts of England where the Romans had permanently settled—all along inside the Wall. He cited a poem of Catullus which mocked at the fashionable dudes of Rome for the foolish habit they had taken up of dropping and adding their aitches. If this were the fashion in the mother country, it would certainly have penetrated to the Roman settlers of England.