As one of them put it, they weren't over there to make a splash, a thing that was pretty hard to do in London, anyhow; and home comforts came before anything.

The conviction about the splash was perhaps a little the teaching of circumstances.
They were influential fellows at home, who had lived for years in the atmosphere of appreciation that surrounds success; their movements were observed in the newspapers; their names stood for wide interests, big concerns.

They had known the satisfaction of a positive importance, not only in their community but in their country; and they had come to England invested as well with the weight that is attached to a public mission.

It may very well be that they looked for some echo of what they were accustomed to, and were a little dashed not to find it--to find the merest published announcement of their arrival, and their introduction by Lord Selkirk to the Colonial Secretary; and no heads turned in the temperance hotel when they came into the dining-room.

It may very well be.