Our arrival at the Hotel de Paris caused much excitement. The English do not read newspapers as generally as do the Americans, and, with but one exception, not one man around the hotel had the slightest idea who we were, where we were from, or what we were doing. In fact, after reading the "World's Tour for the Inter Ocean, Chicago, U. S. A.," as printed in large white letters on our luggage cases, many asked us politely, "Pray, what is the meaning of the legend?" We had learned while in Calcutta that Messrs. Lowe, Lum and Frazer, who had left England on a cycling tour of the world in 1896, were on their way across India, and that in all probability we would meet them in Benares. We looked forward with much pleasure to the occasion of joining hands with cyclists who understood the hardships of great journeys in strange lands, but the meeting occasioned us an unexpected set-back in our natural affection for fellow wheelmen. The trio arrived on the second day of our visit in Benares, and immediately sent word that they wanted to see me. I called upon them, and was greatly surprised to ascertain that they looked upon Mrs. McIlrath and myself as frauds. They questioned me closely as to my journey, and concluded by commenting upon the strangeness of the fact that they had never heard of us before. This I did not regard as unseeming, since few of the inhabitants of "the tight little isle" do know what is occurring in the greater part of the world not under British taxation. Fifteen minutes' conversation with the Frazer outfit convinced me that the new aspirants to globe-girdling honors entertained little respect for Americans in general, and ourselves in particular. Lenz they declared emphatically a nonentity in cycling history; Tom Stevens was totally unreliable, and as for ourselves, we had undergone no hardships, and were comparatively new. They probably did not like Stevens because he was the original "round the world on bicycles;" Lenz because he had accomplished single-handed more up to the time of his death than these fellows could accomplish over the route they had selected, if they completed their program; and Mrs. McIlrath came in for her share of contempt because a wee, slender woman, she had encompassed what they averred they would attempt, in a number strong enough to cross the threshold of any earthly inferno with impunity.