My friend, the American consul-general at Constantinople,

was not without a sense of humor, and I

easily enlisted him in Larry's behalf. The Englishman

thirsted for vengeance and invoked all the powers. He

insisted, with reason, that Larry was a British subject

and that the American consul had no right to give him

asylum,-a point that was, I understand, thoroughly

well-grounded in law and fact. Larry maintained, on

the other hand, that he was not English but Irish, and

that, as his country maintained no representative in

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Turkey, it was his privilege to find refuge wherever it

was offered. Larry was always the most plausible of

human beings, and between us,-he, the American consul

and I,-we made an impression, and got him off.

I did not realize until later that the real joke lay in

the fact that Larry was English-born, and that his devotion

to Ireland was purely sentimental and quixotic.

His family had, to be sure, come out of Ireland some

time in the dim past, and settled in England; but when

Larry reached years of knowledge, if not of discretion,

he cut Oxford and insisted on taking his degree at

Dublin. He even believed,-or thought he believed,-

in banshees. He allied himself during his university

days with the most radical and turbulent advocates of

a separate national existence for Ireland, and occasionally

spent a month in jail for rioting. But Larry's

instincts were scholarly; he made a brilliant record at

the University; then, at twenty-two, he came forth to

look at the world, and liked it exceedingly well. His

father was a busy man, and he had other sons; he

granted Larry an allowance and told him to keep away

from home until he got ready to be respectable. So,

from Constantinople, after a tour of Europe, we together

crossed the Mediterranean in search of the flesh-pots

of lost kingdoms, spending three years in the pursuit.

We parted at Cairo on excellent terms. He returned

to England and later to his beloved Ireland, for

he had blithely sung the wildest Gaelic songs in the

darkest days of our adventures, and never lost his love

for The Sod, as he apostrophized-and capitalized-his

adopted country.

Larry had the habit of immaculateness. He emerged

from his East-side lodging-house that night clothed

properly, and wearing the gentlemanly air of peace and

reserve that is so wholly incompatible with his disposition

to breed discord and indulge in riot. When we

sat down for a leisurely dinner at Sherry's we were not,

I modestly maintain, a forbidding pair. We-if I may

drag myself into the matter-are both a trifle under

the average height, sinewy, nervous, and, just then,

trained fine. Our lean, clean-shaven faces were well-browned

-mine wearing a fresh coat from my days on

the steamer's deck.

Larry had never been in America before, and the

scene had for both of us the charm of a gay and novel

spectacle. I have always maintained, in talking to

Larry of nations and races, that the Americans are the

handsomest and best put-up people in the world, and I

believe he was persuaded of it that night as we gazed

with eyes long unaccustomed to splendor upon the great

company assembled in the restaurant. The lights, the

music, the variety and richness of the costumes of the

women, the many unmistakably foreign faces, wrought

a welcome spell on senses inured to hardship in the

waste and dreary places of earth.




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