Chapter 4 - Page 2

The invitation was engraved on a small card and read "The ---- and Mrs. ---- request the honor of the presence of the ---- at dinner on Wednesday at eight o'clock, etc." I immediately sent my valet with an acceptance and a basket of orchids to the hostess, this being the mode among the men who are au fait.

A week later I went to the dinner, and was taken up to the dressing-room for men, where I found a dozen or more, all in the conventional evening dress I have described--now with tails, it being a ladies' affair. In a corner was a table, and by it stood a negro, also in a dress suit, identical with that of the others. I was cordially greeted by a guest, who said, "Let me introduce you to our American minister to Ijiji and Zanzibar," and he presented me to the tall negro, who was turning out some bottled "cocktail." I shook hands with him, and he laughed, showing a set of teeth like an elephant's tusks, and asked me "what I would have." He was a servant dealing out "appetizers," and this was an American joke. The perpetrator of this joke was a minor official in the State Department, yet the entire party apparently considered it a good joke. Fortunately, I could disguise my real feeling, and I merely relate the incident to give you an idea of the sense of the proprieties as entertained by certain Americans. All that winter the story of the American minister to Zanzibar was told at my expense without doubt.

Having been "fortified," and some of the men took two or three "cocktails" before they became "tuned up," we went down to the drawing-room, where I paid my respects to the host and hostess, who stood at the end of a beautiful room. As I approached the lady greeted me with a charming smile, extending her gloved hand almost on a direct line with her face, grasping it firmly, not shaking it, saying, "Very kind of you, ----. Delighted, I am sure. General"--turning to her husband--"you know the ----, of course," and the general shook my hand as he would a pump-handle, and whispered, "Our minister to Zanzibar treated you all right, eh?" and with a wink indescribable, closing the right eye for a second, passed me on. The story had got down-stairs before me. Americans of the official class have, as a rule, an absolute lack of savoir faire and social refinement; lack them so utterly as to become comical.

I now joined other groups of officers and officials, there being about thirty guests, half of whom were ladies. The latter were all in what is termed full dress. Why "full" I do not know. Here you see one of the most extraordinary features of American life--the dress of women. The Americans make claim to being among the most modest, the most religious, the most proper people in the world, yet the appearance of the ladies at many public functions is beyond belief. All the women in this house were