as familiar to the new and changing generation as Cadwallader-Biddle was to the old and changeless. Between them it was the exception when there was not an emperor, or a prince, or an author, or an actor, or some other variety of a distinguished visitor being put through his paces and shown life in Philadelphia, on the way to the house of one or the other and to the feast prepared in his honour. At the feast, if there was speaking to be done, it was invariably Wayne MacVeagh who did it. As I was not greatly in demand at public functions, I heard him but once—a memorable occasion which did not, however, impress me with the brilliance of his oratory.
Matthew Arnold, the latest distinguished visitor, was to lecture, and I had been looking forward to the evening with an ardour for which alas! I have lost the faculty. Literary celebrities were still novelties—more than that, divinities—in my eyes. Among them, Matthew Arnold held particularly high rank, one of the chief heroes of my worship, and many of my contemporaries worshipped with me. Youth was then, as always, acutely conscious of the burden of life, and we made our luxury of his pessimism. I could spout whole passages of his poems, whole poems when they were short, though now I could not probably get further than their titles. There had been a dinner first—there always was a dinner first in Philadelphia—and a Philadelphia dinner being no light matter, he arrived late. The delay would have done no harm had not Wayne MacVeagh, who presided, introduced him in a speech to which,
