The next day I went to a midday banquet tendered by Melville E. Stone, the general manager of the Associated Press, by the newspaper men of Rome. It was a very different gathering. Newspaper men have a make-up, a physiognomy, a general appearance, more or less founded in what may be called personal neglect, that is, an insensitiveness to personal æsthetics, which is quite characteristic. One can't pick a newspaper man from a crowd with the same readiness and accuracy that he picks a monk or an actor, but the majority of journalists become hall-marked after they have plied their vocation for any considerable length of time. I was impressed with the appearance of intelligence and seriousness of the men of the Italian press. Few of them bore the somatic signs of intimacy with Mr. Barleycorn. The company had a fair sprinkling of ministers, including Nitti and Gallenga, deputies, and ex-ministers, but as far as I could see there were no dukes or princes. The latter are ornamental and not infrequently pleasing to look upon, but a gathering of newspaper men is redolent of democracy, which is antipathic to princely presence. We lunched at the restaurant in the Borghese Gardens. It was a much simpler affair than the banquet tendered the Japs at the Grand Hotel, but it was an ample, edible lunch, and you had the feeling that we had foregathered to honor one who was deserving. When one attempts to describe Mr. Stone he is tempted at once to say he is a typical American. But what is a typical American? There are so many types. William Jennings Bryan is a typical American. So is Henry Cabot Lodge. Benjamin Franklin was a typical American, yet he fraternized with dukes and flirted with duchesses, the sheer embodiment of _suaviter in modo_ and _fortiter in re_. While successfully putting America on the map and advancing the humanities generally, he immortalized himself and affectioned the French people. Abraham Lincoln, we like to think, was a typical American, but were one to encounter him incog. in ceremonial circles, political or social, in Europe to-day, ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred would deny him. Uncle Sam is supposed to depict the somatic make-up of the typical Yankee, and at the same time to convey the idea that he is a man to be reckoned with emotionally and intellectually at all times, in his moments of relaxation and in his hours of activity. Nevertheless the average person has something fairly specific in mind when he says, "He is a typical American." He means a man who displays and who often can't conceal a determination to put through that which he has planned; who is self-confident, opinionated, a stranger to ceremony and oftentimes unfamiliar with ordinary social amenities; who is fully appreciative of the accomplishments and potentialities of his country and its institutions, and who doesn't hesitate to contrast them with those of other countries, often to their disparagement; who speaks only one language, American, and that not