University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

My uncle Ro and myself had been travelling together in
the East, and had been absent from home fully five years,
when we reached Paris. For eighteen months neither of us
had seen a line from America, when we drove through the
barriers, on our way from Egypt, via Algiers, Marseilles,
and Lyons. Not once, in all that time, had we crossed our
own track, in a way to enable us to pick up a straggling
letter; and all our previous precautions to have the epistles
meet us at different bankers in Italy, Turkey, and Malta,
were thrown away.

My uncle was an old traveller—I might almost say, an
old resident—in Europe; for he had passed no less than
twenty years of his fifty-nine off the American continent.
A bachelor, with nothing to do but to take care of a very
ample estate, which was rapidly increasing in value by
the enormous growth of the town of New York, and with
tastes early formed by travelling, it was natural he should
seek those regions where he most enjoyed himself. Hugh
Roger Littlepage was born in 1786—the second son of my
grandfather, Mordaunt Littlepage, and of Ursula Malbone,
his wife. My own father, Malbone Littlepage, was the eldest
child of that connexion; and he would have inherited
the property of Ravensnest, in virtue of his birthright, had

he survived his own parents; but, dying young, I stepped
into what would otherwise have been his succession, in my
eighteenth year. My uncle Ro, however, had got both
Satanstoe and Lilacsbush; two country-houses and farms,
which, while they did not aspire to the dignity of being
estates, were likely to prove more valuable, in the long run,
than the broad acres which were intended for the patrimony
of the elder brother. My grandfather was affluent; for not
only had the fortune of the Littlepages centred in him, but
so did that of the Mordaunts, the wealthier family of the
two, together with some exceedingly liberal bequests from
a certain Col. Dirck Follock, or Van Valkenburgh; who,
though only a very distant connexion, chose to make my
great-grandmother's, or Anneke Mordaunt's, descendants
his heirs. We all had enough; my aunts having handsome
legacies, in the way of bonds and mortgages, on an estate
called Mooseridge, in addition to some lots in town; while
my own sister, Martha, had a clear fifty thousand dollars in
money. I had town-lots, also, which were becoming productive;
and a special minority of seven years had made
an accumulation of cash that was well vested in New York
State stock, and which promised well for the future. I say
a “special” minority; for both my father and grandfather,
in placing, the one, myself and a portion of the property,
and the other the remainder of my estate, under the guardianship
and ward of my uncle, had made a provision that
I was not to come into possession until I had completed my
twenty-fifth year.

I left college at twenty; and my uncle Ro, for so Martha
and myself always called him, and so he was always
called by some twenty cousins, the offspring of our three
aunts;—but my uncle Ro, when I was done with college,
proposed to finish my education by travelling. As this was
only too agreeable to a young man, away we went, just
after the pressure of the great panic of 1836-7 was over,
and our “lots” were in tolerable security, and our stocks
safe. In America it requires almost as much vigilance to
take care of property, as it does industry to acquire it.

Mr. Hugh Roger Littlepage—by the way, I bore the same
name, though I was always called Hugh, while my uncle
went by the different appellations of Roger, Ro, and Hodge,

among his familiars, as circumstances had rendered the
associations sentimental, affectionate, or manly—Mr. Hugh
Roger Littlepage, Senior, then, had a system of his own, in
the way of aiding the scales to fall from American eyes, by
means of seeing more clearly than one does, or can, at
home, let him belong where he may, and in clearing the
specks of provincialism from off the diamond of republican
water. He had already seen enough to ascertain that while
“our country,” as this blessed nation is very apt on all
occasions, appropriate or not, to be called by all who belong
to it, as well as by a good many who do not, could teach a
great deal to the old world, there was a possibility—just a
possibility, remark, is my word—that it might also learn a
little. With a view, therefore, of acquiring knowledge seriatim,
as it might be, he was for beginning with the horn-book,
and going on regularly up to the belles-lettres and
mathematics. The manner in which this was effected deserves
a notice.

Most American travellers land in England, the country
farthest advanced in material civilization; then proceed to
Italy, and perhaps to Greece, leaving Germany, and the less
attractive regions of the north, to come in at the end of the
chapter. My uncle's theory was to follow the order of time,
and to begin with the ancients and end with the moderns;
though, in adopting such a rule, he admitted he somewhat
lessened the pleasure of the novice; since an American,
fresh from the fresher fields of the western continent, might
very well find delight in memorials of the past, more especially
in England, which pall on his taste, and appear insignificant,
after he has become familiar with the Temple of
Neptune, the Parthenon, or what is left of it, and the Coliseum.
I make no doubt that I lost a great deal of passing
happiness in this way, by beginning at the beginning, or by
beginning in Italy, and travelling north.

Such was our course, however; and, landing at Leghorn,
we did the peninsula effectually in a twelvemonth; thence
passed through Spain up to Paris, and proceeded on to Moscow
and the Baltic, reaching England from Hamburg.
When we had got through with the British isles, the antiquities
of which seemed flat and uninteresting to me, after
having seen those that were so much more antique, we

returned to Paris, in order that I might become a man of the
world, if possible, by rubbing off the provincial specks that
had unavoidably adhered to the American diamond while in
its obscurity.

My uncle Ro was fond of Paris, and he had actually
become the owner of a small hotel in the faubourg, in which
he retained a handsome furnished apartment for his own
use. The remainder of the house was let to permanent
tenants; but the whole of the first floor, and of the entresol,
remained in his hands. As a special favour, he would allow
some American family to occupy even his own apartment—
or rather appartement, for the words are not exactly synonymous—when
he intended to be absent for a term exceeding
six months, using the money thus obtained in keeping
the furniture in repair, and his handsome suite of rooms,
including a salon, salle à manger, ante-chambre, cabinet,
several chambres à coucher, and a boudoir—yes, a male
boudoir! for so he affected to call it—in a condition to
please even his fastidiousness.

On our arrival from England, we remained an entire season
at Paris, all that time rubbing the specks off the diamond,
when my uncle suddenly took it into his head that we ought
to see the East. He had never been further than Greece,
himself; and he now took a fancy to be my companion in
such an excursion. We were gone two years and a half,
visiting Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor, the Holy Land,
Petra, the Red Sea, Egypt quite to the second cataracts, and
nearly the whole of Barbary. The latter region we threw
in, by way of seeing something out of the common track.
But so many hats and travelling-caps are to be met with,
now-a-days, among the turbans, that a well-mannered Christian
may get along almost anywhere without being spit
upon. This is a great inducement for travelling generally,
and ought to be so especially to an American, who, on the
whole, incurs rather more risk now of suffering this humiliation
at home, than he would even in Algiers. But the
animus is everything in morals.

We had, then, been absent two years and a half from
Paris, and had not seen a paper or received a letter from
America in eighteen months, when we drove through the
barrier. Even the letters and papers received or seen previously

to this last term, were of a private nature, and contained
nothing of a general character. The “twenty millions”
— it was only the other day they were called the
“twelve millions” — but, the “twenty millions,” we knew,
had been looking up amazingly after the temporary depression
of the moneyed crisis it had gone through; and the
bankers had paid our drafts with confidence, and without
extra charges, during the whole time we had been absent.
It is true, Uncle Ro, as an experienced traveller, went well
fortified in the way of credit—a precaution by no means
unnecessary with Americans, after the cry that had been
raised against us in the old world.

And here I wish to say one thing plainly, before I write
another line. As for falling into the narrow, self-adulatory,
provincial feeling of the American who has never left his
mother's apron-string, and which causes him to swallow,
open-mouthed, all the nonsense that is uttered to the world
in the columns of newspapers, or in the pages of your yearling
travellers, who go on “excursions” before they are
half instructed in the social usages and the distinctive features
of their own country, I hope I shall be just as far
removed from such a weakness, in any passing remark that
may flow from my pen, as from the crime of confounding
principles and denying facts in a way to do discredit to the
land of my birth and that of my ancestors. I have lived
long enough in the “world,” not meaning thereby the southeast
corner of the north-west township of Connecticut, to
understand that we are a vast way behind older nations, in
thought as well as deed, in many things; while, on the opposite
hand, they are a vast way behind us in others. I see no
patriotism in concealing a wholesome truth; and least of all
shall I be influenced by the puerility of a desire to hide
anything of this nature, because I cannot communicate it
to my countrymen without communicating it to the rest of
the world. If England or France had acted on this narrow
principle, where would have been their Shakspeares, their
Sheridans, their Beaumonts and Fletchers, and their Molieres!
No, no! great national truths are not to be treated
as the gossiping surmises of village crones. He who reads
what I write, therefore, must expect to find what I think of
matters and things, and not exactly what he may happen to

think on the same subjects. Any one is at liberty to compare
opinions with me; but I ask the privilege of possessing
some small liberty of conscience in what is, far and near,
proclaimed to be the only free country on the earth. By
“far and near,” I mean from the St. Croix to the Rio
Grande, and from Cape Cod to the entrance of St. Juan de
Fuca; and a pretty farm it makes, the “interval” that lies
between these limits! One may call it “far and near”
without the imputation of obscurity, or that of vanity.

Our tour was completed, in spite of all annoyances; and
here we were again, within the walls of magnificent Paris!
The postilions had been told to drive to the hotel, in the rue
St. Dominique; and we sat down to dinner, an hour after
our arrival, under our own roof. My uncle's tenant had
left the apartment a month before, according to agreement;
and the porter and his wife had engaged a cook, set the
rooms in order, and prepared everything for our arrival.

“It must be owned, Hugh,” said my uncle, as he finished
his soup that day, “one may live quite comfortably in Paris,
if he possess the savoir vivre. Nevertheless, I have a
strong desire to get a taste of native air. One may say and
think what he pleases about the Paris pleasures, and the
Paris cuisine, and all that sort of things; but “home is
home, be it ever so homely.” A `d'Inde aux truffes' is capital
eating; so is a turkey with cranberry sauce. I sometimes
think I could fancy even a pumpkin pie, though there
is not a fragment of the rock of Plymouth in the granite of
my frame.”

“I have always told you, sir, that America is a capital
eating and drinking country, let it want civilization in
other matters, as much as it may.”

“Capital for eating and drinking, Hugh, if you can keep
clear of the grease, in the first place, and find a real cook,
in the second. There is as much difference between the
cookery of New England, for instance, and that of the
Middle States, barring the Dutch, as there is between that
of England and Germany. The cookery of the Middle
States, and of the Southern States, too, though that savours
a little of the West Indies—but the cookery of the Middle
States is English, in its best sense; meaning the hearty,
substantial, savoury dishes of the English in their true domestic

life, with their roast-beef underdone, their beefsteaks
done to a turn, their chops full of gravy, their mutton-broth,
legs-of-mutton, et id omne genus. We have some capital
things of our own, too; such as canvass-backs, reedbirds,
sheepshead, shad, and blackfish. The difference between
New England and the Middle States is still quite observable,
though in my younger days it was patent. I suppose
the cause has been the more provincial origin, and the more
provincial habits, of our neighbours. By George! Hugh,
one could fancy clam-soup just now, eh!”

“Clam-soup, sir, well made, is one of the most delicious
soups in the world. If the cooks of Paris could get hold
of the dish, it would set them up for a whole season.”

“What is `crême de Bavière,' and all such nick-nacks,
boy, to a good plateful of clam-soup? Well made, as you
say—made as a cook of Jennings' used to make it, thirty
years since. Did I ever mention that fellow's soup to you
before, Hugh?”

“Often, sir. I have tested very excellent clam-soup,
however, that he never saw. Of course you mean soup just
flavoured by the little hard-clam—none of your vulgar potage
à la soft-clam?”

“Soft-clams be hanged! they are not made for gentlemen
to eat. Of course I mean the hard-clam, and the small
clam, too—

The cries of New York are quite going out, like everything
else at home that is twenty years old. Shall I send you
some of this eternal poulet à la Marengo? I wish it were
honest American boiled fowl, with a delicate bit of shoat-pork
alongside of it. I feel amazingly homeish this evening,
Hugh!”

“It is quite natural, my dear uncle Ro; and I own to the
`soft impeachment' myself. Here have we both been absent
from our native land five years, and half that time
almost without hearing from it. We know that Jacob”—
this was a free negro who served my uncle, a relic of the

old domestic system of the colonies, whose name would
have been Jaaf, or Yop, thirty years before—“has gone to
our banker's for letters and papers; and that naturally
draws our thoughts to the other side of the Atlantic. I dare
say we shall both feel relieved at breakfast to-morrow, when
we shall have read our respective despatches.”

“Come, let us take a glass of wine together, in the good
old York fashion, Hugh. Your father and I, when boys,
never thought of wetting our lips with the half-glass of Madeira
that fell to our share, without saying, `Good health,
Mall!' `Good health, Hodge!”'

“With all my heart, uncle Ro. The custom was getting
to be a little obsolete even before I left home; but it is
almost an American custom, by sticking to us longer than
to most people.”

“Henri!”

This was my uncle's maitre d'hotel, whom he had kept
at board-wages the whole time of our absence, in order to
make sure of his ease, quiet, taste, skill, and honesty, on
his return.

“Monsieur!”

“I dare say”—my uncle spoke French exceedingly well
for a foreigner; but it is better to translate what he said as
we go—“I dare say this glass of vin de Bourgogne is very
good; it looks good, and it came from a wine-merchant on
whom I can rely; but Mons. Hugh and I are going to drink
together, à l'Amèricaine, and I dare say you will let us
have a glass of Madeira, though it is somewhat late in the
dinner to take it.”

“Tres volontiers, Messieurs—it is my happiness to oblige
you.”

Uncle Ro and I took the Madeira together; but I cannot
say much in favour of its quality.

“What a capital thing is a good Newtown pippin!” exclaimed
my uncle, after eating a while in silence. “They
talk a great deal about their poire beurrée, here at Paris;
but, to my fancy, it will not compare with the Newtowners
we grow at Satanstoe, where, by the way, the fruit is rather
better, I think, than that one finds across the river, at Newtown
itself.”

“They are capital apples, sir; and your orchard at Satanstoe

is one of the best I know, or rather what is left of
it; for I believe a portion of your trees are in what is now
a suburb of Dibbletonborough?”

“Yes, blast that place! I wish I had never parted with
a foot of the old neck, though I did rather make money by
the sale. But money is no compensation for the affections.”

“Rather make money, my dear sir! Pray, may I ask
what Satanstoe was valued at, when you got it from my
grandfather?”

“Pretty well up, Hugh; for it was, and indeed is, a first-rate
farm. Including sedges and salt-meadows, you will
remember that there are quite five hundred acres of it, altogether.”

“Which you inherited in 1829?”

“Of course; that was the year of my father's death.
Why, the place was thought to be worth about thirty thousand
dollars at that time; but land was rather low in Westchester
in 1829.”

“And you sold two hundred acres, including the point,
the harbour, and a good deal of the sedges, for the moderate
modicum of one hundred and ten thousand, cash. A tolerable
sale, sir!”

“No, not cash. I got only eighty thousand down, while
thirty thousand were secured by mortgage.”

“Which mortgage you hold yet, I dare say, if the truth
were told, covering the whole city of Dibbletonborough.
A city ought to be good security for thirty thousand dollars?”

“It is not, nevertheless, in this case. The speculators
who bought of me in 1835 laid out their town, built a hotel,
a wharf, and a warehouse, and then had an auction. They
sold four hundred lots, each twenty-five feet by a hundred,
regulation size, you see, at an average of two hundred and
fifty dollars, receiving one-half, or fifty thousand dollars,
down, and leaving the balance on mortgage. Soon after
this, the bubble burst, and the best lot at Dibbletonborough
would not bring, under the hammer, twenty dollars. The
hotel and the warehouse stand alone in their glory, and will
thus stand until they fall, which will not be a thousand years
hence, I rather think.”

“And what is the condition of the town-plot?”

“Bad enough. The landmarks are disappearing; and it
would cost any man who should attempt it, the value of his
lot, to hire a surveyor to find his twenty-five by a hundred.”

“But your mortgage is good?”

“Ay, good in one sense; but it would puzzle a Philadelphia
lawyer to foreclose it. Why, the equitable interests in
that town-plot, people the place of themselves. I ordered
my agent to commence buying up the rights, as the shortest
process of getting rid of them; and he told me in the very
last letter I received, that he had succeeded in purchasing
the titles to three hundred and seventeen of the lots, at an
average price of ten dollars. The remainder, I suppose,
will have to be absorbed.”

“Absorbed! That is a process I never heard of, as applied
to land.”

“There is a good deal of it done, notwithstanding, in
America. It is merely including within your own possession,
adjacent land for which no claimant appears. What
can I do? No owners are to be found; and then my mortgage
is always a title. A possession of twenty years under
a mortgage is as good as a deed in fee-simple, with full
covenants of warranty, barring minors and femmes covert.”

“You did better by Lilacsbush?”

“Ah, that was a clean transaction, and has left no draw-backs.
Lilacsbush being on the island of Manhattan, one
is sure there will be a town there, some day or other. It
is true, the property lies quite eight miles from the City
Hall; nevertheless, it has a value, and can always be sold
at something near it. Then the plan of New York is made
and recorded, and one can find his lots. Nor can any man
say when the town will not reach Kingsbridge.”

“You got a round price for the Bush, too, I have heard,
sir?”

“I got three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, in
hard cash. I would give no credit, and have every dollar
of the money, at this moment, in good six per cent. stock
of the States of New York and Ohio.”

“Which some persons in this part of the world would
fancy to be no very secure investment.”

“More fools they. America is a glorious country, after
all, Hugh; and it is a pride and a satisfaction to belong to

it. Look back at it, as I can remember it, a nation spit
upon by all the rest of Christendom—”

“You must at least own, my dear sir,” I put in, somewhat
pertly, perhaps, “the example might tempt other people;
for, if ever there was a nation that is assiduously spitting
on itself, it is our own beloved land.”

“True, it has that nasty custom in excess, and it grows
worse instead of better, as the influence of the better mannered
and better educated diminishes; but this is a spot on
the sun—a mere flaw in the diamond, that friction will take
out. But what a country—what a glorious country, in
truth, it is! You have now done the civilized parts of the
old world pretty thoroughly, my dear boy, and must be persuaded,
yourself, of the superiority of your native land.”

“I remember you have always used this language, uncle
Ro; yet have you passed nearly one-half of your time out
of that glorious country, since you have reached man's
estate.”

“The mere consequence of accidents and tastes. I do
not mean that America is a country for a bachelor, to begin
with; the means of amusement for those who have no domestic
hearths, are too limited for the bachelor. Nor do I
mean that society in America, in its ordinary meaning, is
in any way as well-ordered, as tasteful, as well-mannered,
as agreeable, or as instructive and useful, as society in
almost any European country I know. I have never supposed
that the man of leisure, apart from the affections,
could ever enjoy himself half as much at home, as he may
enjoy himself in this part of the world; and I am willing
to admit that, intellectually, most gentlemen in a great European
capital live as much in one day, as they would live
in a week in such places as New York, and Philadelphia,
and Baltimore.”

“You do not include Boston, I perceive, sir.”

“Of Boston I say nothing. They take the mind hard,
there, and we had better let such a state of things alone. But
as respects a man or woman of leisure, a man or woman
of taste, a man or woman of refinement generally, I am
willing enough to admit that, cœteris paribus, each can find
far more enjoyment in Europe than in America. But the
philosopher, the philanthropist, the political economist—in

a word, the patriot, may well exult in such elements of profound
national superiority as may be found in America.”

“I hope these elements are not so profound but they can
be due up at need, uncle Ro?”

“There will be little difficulty in doing that, my boy.
Look at the equality of the laws, to begin with. They are
made on the principles of natural justice, and are intended
for the benefit of society—for the poor as well as the rich.”

“Are they also intended for the rich as well as the poor?”

“Well, I will grant you a slight blemish is beginning to
appear, in that particular. It is a failing incidental to humanity,
and we must not expect perfection. There is certainly
a slight disposition to legislate for numbers, in order
to obtain support at the polls, which has made the relation
of debtor and creditor a little insecure, possibly; but prudence
can easily get along with that. It is erring on the
right side, is it not, to favour the poor instead of the rich,
if either is to be preferred?”

“Justice would favour neither, but treat all alike. I have
always heard that the tyranny of numbers was the worst
tyranny in the world.”

“Perhaps it is, where there is actually tyranny, and for
a very obvious reason. One tyrant is sooner satisfied than
a million, and has even a greater sense of responsibility. I
can easily conceive that the Czar himself, if disposed to be
a tyrant, which I am far from thinking to be the case with
Nicholas, might hesitate about doing that, under his undivided
responsibility, which one of our majorities would do,
without even being conscious of the oppression it exercised,
or caring at all about it. But, on the whole, we do little of
the last, and not in the least enough to counterbalance the
immense advantages of the system.”

“I have heard very discreet men say that the worst symptom
of our system is the gradual decay of justice among
us. The judges have lost most of their influence, and the
jurors are getting to be law-makers, as well as law-breakers.”

“There is a good deal of truth in that, I will acknowledge,
also; and you hear it asked constantly, in a case of
any interest, not which party is in the right, but who is on
the jury. But I contend for no perfection; all I say is, that

the country is a glorious country, and that you and I have
every reason to be proud that old Hugh Roger, our predecessor
and namesake, saw fit to transplant himself into it, a
century and a half since.”

“I dare say now, uncle Ro, it would strike most Europeans
as singular that a man should be proud of having
been born an American—Manhattanese, as you and I both
were.”

“All that may be true, for there have been calculated
attempts to bring us into discredit of late, by harping on the
failure of certain States to pay the interest on their debts.
But all that is easily answered, and more so by you and me
as New Yorkers. There is not a nation in Europe that
would pay its interest, if those who are taxed to do so had
the control of these taxes, and the power to say whether
they were to be levied or not.”

“I do not see how that mends the matter. These countries
tell us that such is the effect of your system there,
while we are too honest to allow such a system to exist in
this part of the world.”

“Pooh! all gammon, that. They prevent the existence
of our system for very different reasons, and they coerce
the payment of the interest on their debts that they may
borrow more. This business of repudiation, as it is called,
however, has been miserably misrepresented; and there is
no answering a falsehood by an argument. No American
State has repudiated its debt, that I know of, though several
have been unable to meet their engagements as they have
fallen due.”

“Unable, uncle Ro?”

“Yes, unable—that is the precise word. Take Pennsylvania,
for instance; that is one of the richest communities
in the civilized world; its coal and iron alone would make
any country affluent, and a portion of its agricultural population
is one of the most affluent I know of. Nevertheless,
Pennsylvania, owing to a concurrence of events, could not
pay the interest on her debt for two years and a half, though
she is doing it now, and will doubtless continue to do it.
The sudden breaking down of that colossal moneyed institution,
the soi-disant Bank of the United States, after it ceased
to be in reality a bank of the government, brought about

such a state of the circulation as rendered payment, by any
of the ordinary means known to government, impossible.
I know what I say, and repeat impossible. It is well known
that many persons, accustomed to affluence, had to carry
their plate to the mint, in order to obtain money to go to
market. Then something may be attributed to the institutions,
without disparaging a people's honesty. Our institutions
are popular, just as those of France are the reverse;
and the people, they who were on the spot—the home creditor,
with his account unpaid, and with his friends and
relatives in the legislature, and present to aid him, contended
for his own money, before any should be sent abroad.”

“Was that exactly right, sir?”

“Certainly not; it was exactly wrong, but very particularly
natural. Do you suppose the King of France would
not take the money for his civil list, if circumstances should
compel the country to suspend on the debt for a year or
two, or the ministers their salaries? My word for it, each
and all of them would prefer themselves as creditors, and
act accordingly. Every one of these countries has suspended
in some form or other, and in many instances balanced
the account with the sponge. Their clamour against
us is altogether calculated with a view to political effect.”

“Still, I wish Pennsylvania, for instance, had continued
to pay, at every hazard.”

“It is well enough to wish, Hugh; but it is wishing for
an impossibility. Then you and I, as New Yorkers, have
nothing to do with the debt of Pennsylvania, no more than
London would have to do with the debt of Dublin or Quebec.
We have always paid our interest, and, what is more,
paid it more honestly, if honesty be the point, than even
England has paid hers. When our banks suspended, the
State paid its interest in as much paper as would buy the
specie in open market; whereas England made paper legal
tender, and paid the interest on her debt in it for something
like five-and-twenty years, and, that, too, when her paper
was at a large discount. I knew of one American who
held near a million of dollars in the English debt, on which
he had to take unconvertible paper for the interest for a long
series of years. No, no! this is all gammon, Hugh, and
is not to be regarded as making us a whit worse than our

neighbours. The equality of our laws is the fact in which
I glory!”

“If the rich stood as fair a chance as the poor, untle
Ro.”

“There is a screw loose there, I must confess; but it
amounts to no great matter.”

“Then the late bankrupt law?”

“Ay, that was an infernal procedure—that much I will
acknowledge, too. It was special legislation enacted to pay
particular debts, and the law was repealed as soon as it had
done its duty. That is a much darker spot in our history
than what is called repudiation, though perfectly honest men
voted for it.”

“Did you ever hear of a farce they got up about it at
New York, just after we sailed?”

“Never; what was it, Hugh? though American plays
are pretty much all farces.”

“This was a little better than common, and, on the
whole, really clever. It is the old story of Faust, in which
a young spendthrift sells himself, soul and body, to the
devil. On a certain evening, as he is making merry with
a set of wild companions, his creditor arrives, and, insisting
on seeing the master, is admitted by the servant. He
comes on, club-footed and behorned, as usual, and betailed,
too, I believe; but Tom is not to be scared by trifles. He
insists on his guest's being seated, on his taking a glass of
wine, and then on Dick's finishing his song. But, though
the rest of the company had signed no bonds to Satan, they
had certain outstanding book-debts, which made them excessively
uncomfortable; and the odour of brimstone being
rather strong, Tom arose, approached his guest, and desired
to know the nature of the particular business he had mentioned
to his servant. `This bond, sir,' said Satan, significantly.
`This bond? what of it, pray? It seems all right.'
`Is not that your signature?' `I admit it.' `Signed in
your blood?' `A conceit of your own; I told you at the
time that ink was just as good in law.' `It is past due,
seven minutes and fourteen seconds.' `So it is, I declare!
but what of that?' `I demand payment.' `Nonsense!
no one thinks of paying now-a-days. Why, even Pennsylvania
and Maryland don't pay.' `I insist on payment.'

`Oh! you do, do you?' Tom draws a paper from his
pocket, and adds, magnificently, `There, then, if you 're so
urgent—there is a discharge under the new bankrupt law,
signed Smith Thompson.' This knocked the devil into a
cocked-hat at once.”

My uncle laughed heartily at my story; but, instead of
taking the matter as I had fancied he might, it made him
think better of the country than ever.

“Well, Hugh, we have wit among us, it must be confessed,”
he cried, with the tears running down his cheeks,
“if we have some rascally laws, and some rascals to administer
them. But here comes Jacob with his letters and
papers—I declare, the fellow has a large basket-full.”

Jacob, a highly respectable black, and the great-grandson
of an old negro named Jaaf, or Yop, who was then living
on my own estate at Ravensnest, had just then entered, with
the porter and himself lugging in the basket in question.
There were several hundred newspapers, and quite a hundred
letters. The sight brought home and America clearly
and vividly before us; and, having nearly finished the dessert,
we rose to look at the packages. It was no small task
to sort our mail, there being so many letters and packages
to be divided.

“Here are some newspapers I never saw before,” said
my uncle, as he tumbled over the pile; “`The Guardian
of the Soil'—that must have something to do with Oregon.”

“I dare say it has, sir. Here are at least a dozen letters
from my sister.”

“Ay, your sister is single, and can still think of her brother;
but mine are married, and one letter a-year would be
a great deal. This is my dear old mother's hand, however;
that is something. Ursula Malbone would never forget her
child. Well, bon soir, Hugh. Each of us has enough to
do for one evening.”

“Au revoir, sir. We shall meet at ten to-morrow, when
we can compare our news, and exchange gossip.”