and for an hour or two made him doubt the wisdom of international
marriages; but this mood passed away, and he remained a fixture at the
_maison_ Bascombe, where the very postman came to know him and
generously sympathized with the malady from which he was suffering. Nor
was this the only house in which he was made very welcome. Baltimore is
one of many American cities that suffer from the vague but painful
accusation of being "provincial;" but, admitting this dreadful charge,
it has social, gastronomic, and other charms of its own that ought to
compensate for the absence of that doubtful good, cosmopolitanism. Mr.
Heathcote certainly found no fault with it, and did not miss the
population, pauperism, or other institutions of Paris, London, or
Vienna. On the contrary, he took very kindly to the pretty place, and
heartily liked the people. There was nothing oppressive or ostentatious
in the attentions he received, but just the cordiality, grace, and charm
of an old-established society of most refined traditions, perfect
_savoir-vivre_, and chronic hospitality.

"You are making a Baltimorean of me, you are so awfully kind to me," he
would say, pronouncing the _a_ in Bal as he would have done in sal; but
the truth was that he had become primarily a Bascomite and only very
incidentally a Baltimorean. The city counts hundreds of such converts
every year. He was so happy and entirely content that he would have
quite forgotten what it was to be bored just at this period but for
certain individuals,--a boastful, disagreeable Irishman, who fastened
upon him apparently for no other reason than that he might abuse England
at great length and talk of his own valor, accomplishments, and
"paddygree" (as he very properly called the record that established his
connection with Brian Boroo and Irish kings generally), and a lady who
seemed to take the most astounding, unquenchable interest in the English
nobility, as more than one lady had seemed to him to do, to his great