CHAPTER XX AN AFFAIR WITHOUT PRECEDENT American Characteristics Roadside Minstrels The King's Banqueting Hall Custom and Convention Submerged by the Magic of Senator Bill - A Mutilated Rhapsody - Art in Rags - Gentility in Ruins. Minstrels Well within the entrance to the "White Hart" stood a gentleman with his broad back turned towards the curious crowd without. Around him we could distinguish a prettily gowned and chattering company of young ladies, and a number of gentlemen amiably but vigorously arguing something that seemed to demand immediate decision. Nothing, we thought, but royalty or eccentricity could have attracted such a crowd and such a frenzied lot of road harpsters. We concluded that the fuss was either in honour of the King's arrival or the chance visit of Miss Marie Corelli, who might have walked from Stratford-upon-Avon, where she lives with a large umbrella, and a stuffed club for Hall Caine and London critics. But neither of these distinguished personages had caused the scene in the staid and decorous precincts of the "White Hart." It was only that the Brooklyn senator from New York had come to Windsor with his launch party, fallen in near the boat landing with several rival street bands, idly tipped one of them an American dollar and thereby incited all the other vagabond musicians to pursue him and his party to the hotel. There he had some difficulty in explaining to the manager that he had not commissioned the bands to herald his triumphal entry into Windsor in this loud and unseemly manner. But no one, not even an imperturbable, custommade, provincial hotel manager, could look upon the senator's face, and hear his voice so indicative of unbounded generosity and good fellowship, without accepting his explanation and his gratuity. As we entered. the hotel the senator stepped into the street, said something inaudible to the leaders of the serenading hosts, and dismissed them with a playful wave of his kindly hand. The strolling artists appeared to be satisfied, and their several troops shambled off in three directions. The senator returned to his guests smiling roguishly. The crowd dispersed, Windsor relapsed into its usual lethargy, and the Senator Bill magical American yachtsman translated his party from embarrassment to a bounteous dinner, in the liberality of which the hotel manager found substantial compensation for his bruised theories of custom and convention. The feast was drawing to its gratifying conclusion, many jests had gone trippingly across the board, the company was radiant-pleasant to hear, good to look upon, in its river tan and colour. At its head sat the paternal genius who had been the perennial prompter of the merry party since it sailed from its native heath across the sea. They called him Senator Bill wherever in New York one man hath love for another, wherever true sportsmanship is at par, gentility and hospitality appreciated. Bidding his guests remain, the senator left the room. In twenty minutes he returned, betraying signs of the weariness of a witness cross-examined by one of His Majesty's pragmatic purists upon the Bench. Resuming his chair with an air of mingled disgust and triumph, the senator related how he had planned a little surprise for us that evening, and that in relation thereto he had just had a prayer meeting with the manager. "I asked him," he said, "for a private parlour, or a section of the garden, or a small dining room, or the chapel, or any other old place where we could have our coffee while the pick of the artists we met this afternoon played for us the music characteristic of this magnitudinous little country." "There is no such music here," blurted Russell, who thought the Ave Maria might be played on a drum, "you are not in Hungary, senator. Here most of the street, vaudeville, and concert music has first been popularised in your own country and its author is anybody from Bach to Leno.' "Let us hear no more from you, Jack Russell. Go away back and sit down behind yourself, or keep still. As I was saying," continued the senator, his jovial manner reasserting itself, "I tried to impress upon the manager that I must have an apartment wherein to entertain my guests in my own peculiar way, whether that way was strict Windsorial orthodoxy or only according to the canons of a bully time in Brooklyn. Well, children, he was aghast, said the house was full, had no private parlour, no dining room, no hall, no chapel, in fact tried to intimate that the hotel had just been torn down and that I was a trespasser upon the ruins. "Damme! I could see right through that fellow; somebody must have warned him that we were Americans, and he was afraid we would display the chief characteristic of our country-I mean noise. So lifting him along by the arm and telling him of the fishing I have on my preserve in the Gulf of Mexico, where we use a ninety-foot Oregon pine for a pole and bait with young whitewashed whales, I began exploring the premises. He had cleverly dodged all the vacant parlours and kept me clear of every available apartment, when we approached a pair of huge doors about twenty-six feet high. 'Hold on,' I said, 'what do you keep in here? Bacon or Gorgonzola cheese?' 'My deah sir,' he stammered, with great emotion and evident embarrassment, 'th', th', that sir, is the banqueting hall of His Majesty King Edward the VII!' "Well, open it up,' I said as gently as the toadies of the Royal Academy; 'maybe I can make it do - my boys and girls are very adaptable as most Americans are!' I must have offended the gentleman, for in his politest manner he told me my suggestion was simply preposterous. 'See here,' I said, 'what is the price of this room for a private |