Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/154

140 of Senator and Mrs. James Knox Floud, who returned from foreign parts on the 5:16 flyer yesterday afternoon. Colonel Ruggles has long been intimately associated with the family of his lordship the Earl of Brinstead, and especially with his lordship's brother, the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, with whom he has recently been sojourning in la belle France. In a brief interview which the Colonel genially accorded ye scribe, he expressed himself as delighted with our thriving little city.

"It's somewhat a town—if I've caught your American slang," he said with a merry twinkle in his eyes. "You have the garden spot of the West, if not of the civilized world, and your people display a charm that must be, I dare say, typically American. Altogether, I am enchanted with the wonders I have beheld since landing at your New York, particularly with the habit your best people have of roughing it in camps like that of Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson among the mountains of New York, where I was most pleasantly entertained by himself and his delightful wife. The length of my stay among you is uncertain, though I have been pressed by the Flouds, with whom I am stopping, and by the C. Belknap-Jacksons to prolong it indefinitely, and in fact to identify myself to an extent with your social life."

The Colonel is a man of distinguished appearance, with the seasoned bearing of an old campaigner, and though at moments he displays that cool reserve so typical of the English gentleman, evidence was not lacking last evening that he can unbend on occasion. At the lawn fête held in the spacious grounds of Judge Ballard, where a myriad Japanese lanterns made the scene a veritable fairyland, he was quite the most sought-after notable present, and gayly tripped the light fantastic toe with the élite of Red Gap's smart set there assembled.

From his cordial manner of entering into the spirit of the affair we predict that Colonel Ruggles will be a decided acquisition to our social life, and we understand that a series of recherché entertainments in his honour has already been planned by Mrs. County Judge Ballard, who took the distinguished guest under her wing the moment he appeared last evening. Welcome to our