20 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

dinner party by a lady, I had forgotten the hour
of the dinner and had to telephone to my hostess
for information. Now I have always had a
difficulty in hearing the voices of American women
when speaking on the telephone; they are pitched
in a key to which I am not accustomed; and they,
reciprocally, have a difficulty in hearing me. On
this occasion neither my hostess nor I succeeded
in achieving intelligibility. For some time we
yelled at one another to no purpose, she apparently

fetting more exasperated as the imbroglio
eepened. At last her voice came through quite
distinctly: " What damn fool is this/' she cried,
" trying to talk the English language to an
educated American woman ? " Whereupon I
managed to make her understand that I was the
guest of the evening, and the conversation
assumed a different tone. Subsequently I took
her into dinner, and found her a charming com-
panion, the conversation turning mainly on the
poetry of Wordsworth.

Other visits followed in 1909, 1910, 1912 and
1913, three of them including Canada, which I
traversed from east to west. On the last two
occasions, 1912 and 1913, I spent the long*
vacation in the Maritime Provinces of Canada,
mainly in New Brunswick, where I perpetrated
the folly (afterwards repented of) of purchasing
part of a long deserted settlement with 400 acres
of backwoods (I gave 800 dollars fof it) where a
man might live for months with no companions