and burned into my soul like tunic of Nessus. I should as soon
have thought of asking Queen Victoria to brush out my hair as
that fine lady in brocade silk and Mechlin lace. But she was
good and gracious, and did not annihilate me on the spot, as
she easily have done, for which I shall thank her as long as
I live.

"You sent for me?" she inquired, with the blandest accents
imaginable. I can't tell a lie, pa,--you know I can't tell a
lie; besides, I had not time to make up one, and I said, "Yes,"
and then, of all stupid devices that could filter into my
brain, I must needs stammer out that I should like a few
matches! A pretty thing to bring a dowager duchess up nine
pairs of stairs for!

"I will ring the bell," she said, with a tender, reproachful
sweetness and dignity, which conveyed without unkindness the
severest rebuke tempered by womanly pity, and proceeded to
instruct me in the nature and uses of the bell-rope, as she
would any little dairy-maid who had heard only the chime of
cow-bells all the days of her life. Then she sailed out of
the room, serene and majestic, like a seventy-four man-of-war,
while I, a squalid, salt-hay gunlow, (Venetian blind-ed into
gondola,) first sank down in confusion, and then rose up in
fury and brushed all the hair out of my head.

"I declare," I said to Halicarnassus, when we were fairly
beyond ear-shot of the city next morning, "I don't approve of
sumptuary laws, and I like America to be the El Dorado of the
poor man, and I go for the largest liberty of the individual;