Show t MOBTIFIEDtAMEBICAN J His Unexpected Meetingwith Lord Salisbury I am very glad to find that my old friend Salisbury is doing so well said a Brooklyn gentleman one morning recently re-cently as he looked up from his paper to a friend who sat wifh him on the piazza of his summer residence on Staten Island What Salisbury do you refer to asked the friend Surely you dopt mean the Marquis of Salisbury the Prime Minister of England That is exactly who mean said the former Why have I never told told you about any meeting with Lord Salisbury at Cologne It was an in promptu affair bIt it made a deep impression im-pression upon myself and upon my family and I believe that his lordship was also impressed at the time And I believe that her ladyship he was accompanied ac-companied by his daughter was also impressed I have frequently related the details of our meeting and I have no doubt that Lord Salisbury has done the same thing I shouldnt wonder if he had related the matter at the dinner table of Queen Victoria herself that is provided hi lordships noble legs have had the opportunity of disporting themselves them-selves between the royal mahogany Some ten or fifteen years ago con tinued the gentleman business took me to Europe for a few months I took my wife my daughter and one of my sous with me One pleasant afternoon after-noon I think it was in Augustwe arrived ar-rived in Cologne and stopped at a hotel which was not far from the magnificent cathedral for which that city is famous We left our apartment early in the evening intending to take a stroll but as we were descending the stairs my wife spied the open door of an ordinar ily furnished parlor She looked in and said Thats the public parlor Let us go in We entered the room and found that the windows commanded a superb view of the cathedral I noticed on the floor a carpet bag and one or two um brellas but I supposed that these had been left there by some guests and the lo u1 1vtt idea that the room could possibly be anything but a public parlor didnot then enter my head We gazed at and admired the vast and stately work of architecture for some moments Then we heard steps and looking around saw a gentleman apparently of middle age and accompanied accom-panied by a young lady They were evidently English And I observed that the gentleman looked at me stern ly and it flashed through my mind that he might imagine that we were monopolizing the window aceommoda tions of the room We accordingly moved aside leaving the strangers at liberty to select the window which they preferred Still the gentleman looked sternly at me while his companion looked laughingly at my wife and i daughter We must be more outspoken out-spoken in our politeness thought I Approaching the gentleman I bowed and invited him to step to the window and look at the cathedral It would be impossible said I to find anywhere in Cologne a better view of the cathedral than is to be had from the windows of this parlor Even this failed to induce the strange gentleman to part with any portion of his s ern lance In the meantime my wife and daughter and son had turned their attention to the haughty oiagladylly wife approached her in a motherly way and extended to her an invitation to view the cathedral but received no response But the strange gentleman had evidently grown weary of merely regarding me sternly and he responded to mypressing invitation invi-tation He responded by announcing that the room was a private parlor which he himself had engaged and thereby indirectly invited myself and my family to leave the apartment as soon as we could conveniently do so Then it flashed across my mind that in European hotels like the one in which we then were there were no public parlors par-lors and I cursed my own stupidity in not having remembered the fact before I apologized for my mistake and said that finding the door open I had taken th J lartmentfor a public parlor My wife apologized my daughter apologized apolo-gized and the apologetic fever even seized upon my son But we did not apologize as fully as we had intended to because neither the strange gentleman nor his companion made the slightest response to our explanations They continued to gaze at ushe sternly and she haughtily Apologizing under such discouraging circumstances is not pleasant We could do nothing consequently conse-quently but beat a retreat which we aid with our countenances suffused with blushes and our bosoms filled with mortification The possessor of the supposed public parlor watched us still with a stern expression until we were out of the room We had forgotten for the time being all about the beautv and magnificence of the great Cologne cathedral I hunted up the landlord and asked him to tell me the name of the gentleman gentle-man into whose crivate parlor we had stumbled Why replied he in an awestruck I awe-struck whisper that gentleman is mv Lord the Marquis of Salisbury a great Englishmana statesman I IlIad heard of the Marquis who was then beginning be-ginning to cut a considerable figure m I Enlish politics The fact that his lordship was a man of some distinction did not in the least tend to lessen the I mortification and anger which I felt i I spent the remainder of the evening I i with my family in our apartment In factwe locked ourselves in with the determination I de-termination that on that evening at least we should not render it necessary for the American Eagle to again hang his proud beak in shame owing ° to our ignorance i of European customs After thiukiqg over the matter carefully I could not decide wiio I was angry with my Lord Salisbury for refusing to act S > ac-t my apologies as it seemed to me I that any gentleman should have done under the circumstances or with myself for having failed to remember that in I the hotel there was no such thing as a public parlor a Ever since our little conference at Cologne I have spoken of the present Prime Minister of England somewhat ironically perhaps as my old friend Salisbury Sal-isbury rr 5 I II |