the life of her own child so cheap. She did not hold it worthy of a
single expression of gratitude; she had not a word to spare for him or
me. Was this woman a human monstrosity and void of all natural feeling?
or else was it part of the American etiquette to suppress all outward
signs of emotion?

What puzzled me most was the boy. He was so different from the happy,
talkative little fellow he had been with me and with his father some
minutes ago, and he looked just as dull and inanimate as when I had seen
him first on the railway. Was it because he could only speak Hungarian?
But then, how could he speak to his father? Who had taught the boy to
speak that peculiar language, dear to me and my compatriots, but wholly
unintelligible and of very little use or advantage to the world at
large?

I observed that Mr. Dumany held a short conversation with a tall
liveried footman behind him, and I understood that he ordered him to
take out my luggage. I protested and tried to escape. I like hospitality
at home; but when I come into a foreign country, I prefer the simplest
inn or the obscurest hotel to the most magnificent apartments of a
palace of a prince of the Bourse, because independence goes with the
former, and of all slavery I fear that of etiquette the worst.

But Mr. Dumany did not mean to give way to my polite protestations.
"Just surrender nicely, pray!" he said, smilingly. "It saves you
trouble. Look! If you insist upon going to some hotel, I promise you
that all the reporters of every paper we have, daily and weekly, will be
sure to pester you day and night with interviews, besides the reporters
of foreign papers here, of which we also have an abundance. Every word
you speak will by each reporter be turned into a different meaning, and