The age-herald., 1901-07-06
The Fourth in Deah H'oI Lunnon.

Our compatriots in London, who gath cred to the number of five hundred to celebrate the Fourth by feastins. were unaccountably lacking in big guns of our own or of English citizenship" said a Birmingham man who has attended sev- eral Fourth of July dinners given by the American colony In London.
 We are to infer that 'Dr. Joseph Par ker minister of the City Temple was the principal clergyman present since he Is the only one mentioned In the cabled press report pr. Parker would be out of place in any assemblage of men who were of conseqNence in the state, and impossi- ble amongst men of social position. He is a notorious pulpit sensationalist of an aggravated Sheldon type. Yet the Amer jeans in London gave to him the honor of toasting the President.
 Ordinarily at this season of the year there are several of the American Epis- copal bishops in London, and they used to be conspicuous at the Fourth of July dinners. Bishop Potter of New York was one of them, and I have heard him tell diCCuotCo lildl were tiiOuBh lO astonish the English guests coming from a lord spiritual. The dinner In 1897 was given In the Kensington hotel, which towers above the palace in which Queen Victoria was born. Amongst the guests were Ambassador John Hay, Am bassador Horace Porter. Bishop Potter, Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, and several other American Episcopal bishops whose names do not recall.
 ''The company to the number of $40, in- cluding a number of men of social dis tinction in London, gathered in the great reception room and waited there for dn- ner Suddenly the main door. opening to the Kings Chamber, as the dining hall is called. was thrown open and in the doorway appeared the gigantic form of an announcing herald in gorgeous livery. We all fixed our gaze upon that magnifi- gently arrayed servant, and he seeing that we all actually saw hdm, he lifted up voice of thunder and cried:
 Your exceIlencies, my lords, and gen. tlemenr
 tHO dhpdSoouoio WcIc Cdiiil, iHc bishops blushed happily at being styled my lords and some of us were dying to laugh at the mock -pageantry. The gigan- tic servant paused long enough to fully impress us with his splendor and then, his mighty voice low fallen, he jerked out sibbilantly,
 Dinner is served
 GJo,l s..A. ,t found his marked seat by means of printed plan of the tables given him as he entered
 "The dinner was good and the wine ex- cellent and abundant, though everybody looked as if he would have been happier with chop and a mug of ale in a Fleet street chophouse. The speeches were be- gun early, the first speaker being Ambas- sador, now Secretary, Hay, and a more tasteful or more beautiful speech I never heard. It had the ring of the true and loftier Americanism, softened by a tender pathos that was due to the death, at Southampton the day before, of our Ad- miral Miller's young daughter; the ad- miral and the ambassador being intima te personal friends.
 Ambassador Porter delivered a happy speech, Bishop Potter rattled, Bishop Whipple was funereal, and the other speakers were bores. One of them was a famous American who had indulged in too much wine.
 T should say, the bores were we'll into their work when I left, for when a cer- tain countryman of ours. a son of fame, began, fled precipftately, caught a cab outside and gave the cabman double fare to get me to music hall before it's clos ing time. There was another one of those London dinners that beat-but that is an- other story"