It was in the first flush of good feeling, when Great Britain felt the relief of being discharged from so fearful an indebtedness, and the United States public felt bound to us closer than ever by the ennoblement of so many of its most prominent citizens, that I made my business trip. I went by air, of course, on the _Atmospheric_, one of the old Handley Page line. I missed, by doing so, the sight of the Statue of Liberty, which had then only just been fitted with the apparatus which makes its right eye wink on the approach of the traveller: but as we came to earth at the customsdrome we were greeted by the gigantic “Eagle” scar on the hill-side, which has since been filled in with lapis-lazuli, but was then more striking for the simplicity of the natural chalk. We were still in the old prohibition days, and I remember that before landing we came to water beside a sea-going liner, into which we transferred all our petrol tins, receiving in return a heavy cargo of similar tins, concerning the contents of which no questions were asked of us when we landed. The hospitality of the Americans has always been, and still is, justly famous, but I suppose the arrangements for its exercise have never been so elaborate or so complete as they were at the time of my visit. You took with you no introductions, had no questions asked about your antecedents, so long as you were a first class passenger. You went straight from the customsdrome to a hospitality bureau, where you stated the probable length of your stay and gave a list of the cities you intended to visit, in return for which an official handed you a complete list of the hosts who were to entertain you at each centre, together with a little sheaf of “emergency introductions” for each—the need for these last came home to me at San Francisco, where I found that my destined host had gone bankrupt and shot himself the day before my arrival. It was without any fuss or elaborateness of introductions etc. that I spent seven months on this hospitable continent, visiting New York, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Wichita, and Rooseveltville in the course of my stay. I should explain that when I arrived at New York I received a wireless informing me that the business projects which my visit had in view were not, after all, feasible; but my partners agreed with me that since I had had all the fatigue of the journey I might as well travel about and improve my mind a bit before returning to harness.