I was equal to the emergency.

I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the railways in America--all of them under sentence of death for murder in the first degree.

That closed him out.
We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during the siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen.

Naturally, a champagne luncheon was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life.

Toasts and jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our hospitable reception, and one by the Governor-General in reply, in which he returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc..