not come until he was at luncheon. General Corbin was present, and the President at once turned to him and asked, "General, is there such a rule?"

"Yes, Mr. President," he answered.

"Why?"

"The Department adopted it, I believe, from motives of economy."

“General, can you telegraph from here to the Philippines?"

General Corbin thought that if the order were to be repealed it could better be done from Washington. But the President said: "No, no; we will not wait. The mothers who gave the best they had to the country should not be breaking their hearts that the government may save twenty-five or fifty dollars. Save the money somewhere else." Forthwith, from the table at Sagamore Hill went the new ruling that the names of the privates as well as those of the officers falling in the Philippines, should be sent home by cable.

An English guest of world-wide experience pronounced the table-talk at Oyster Bay as brilliant as any he ever had heard. The variety of the President's topics, his grasp of subjects, his out-of-the-way

knowledge, and his marvellous memory reminded him of the conversation of Gladstone. A British army officer, with a long experience in India, declared, after his visit, that the President knew more than he about the history and the administration of the Indian government. An ambassador, lunching at Oyster Bay, made some remark about a buffalo head on the wall. This led his host to express his regret that we in this country should have exterminated the American bison in a dozen years, where Europe was a thousand years in killing off the auroch. Then he talked of the migration of the fauna of South America across the isthmus and of the fauna of Asia across Behring Strait, with the resultant intermingling of the species in North America.

"Where did you ever find time to get all that information?" the guest asked, in genuine amazement.

"Oh," the President replied, "I have a store of such useless information, all gained in odd minutes. For instance, while in hot water over some practical question, I like nothing better than to study some such remote subject as the dimensions of the empire of Alexander the Great."

The private, domestic side of Oyster Bay, however,