Inside the British Museum [excerpt]

     I cannot close this article without mentioning the host of courtesies I encountered in the Museum. Fellow Americans there were very kind—one whom I scarcely knew undertook to copy some matter for me at Oxford when he was planning a trip there after I had returned from that university town. But I refer especially to the English acquaintances I made there—the fellowship of books bringing many into my ken, in divers unconventional ways. I chanced to be at work in the library on the day that news came that McKinley had been shot at Buffalo, and I shall never forget how I virtually held a reception at my desk all day, at least thirty Britishers (some before unknown except by sight) stopping by to express their horror at the deed of Czolgosz. Such incidents help cement that “hands across the sea” feeling, which has grown so greatly in the last few years, and in which the summer work of hundreds of American students in the British Museum plays no mean part.