Looking over these lists, I think it is better to present them without
comment; I feel sure that somewhere or other in them one should detect
the heart-throbs, the pulsations of two great peoples. But I don't get
it. In fact the two lists look to me terribly like "the mind of Costa
Rica."
The same editor also advised me to mingle, at his expense, in the
brilliant intellectual life of England. "There," he said, "is a coterie
of men, probably the most brilliant group East of the Mississippi." (I
think he said the Mississippi). "You will find them," he said to me,
"brilliant, witty, filled with repartee." He suggested that I
should send him back, as far as words could express it, some of this
brilliance. I was very glad to be able to do this, although I fear
that the results were not at all what he had anticipated. Still, I held
conversations with these people and I gave him, in all truthfulness, the
result. Sir James Barrie said, "This is really very exceptional weather
for this time of year." Cyril Maude said, "And so a Martini cocktail
is merely gin and vermouth." Ian Hay said, "You'll find the underground
ever so handy once you understand it."
I have a lot more of these repartees that I could insert here if it was
necessary. But somehow I feel that it is not.