of England, France, and Italy, in the fifties, was a liberal
education, and I used sometimes to stare fascinated at the boots of
these wayfarers, admiring them for the wondrous places in which they
had trodden. Silsbee travelled with his artistic and historic
consciousness all on board, and had so much to say that he never was
able to say it all.

But to my father himself were accorded the honors of the captain's
table, and for him were fired the salutes of cannon which thundered us
out of Boston Harbor and into Halifax. These compliments, however,
were paid to him not as a man of letters, but as a political
representative of his country, and, let a man be as renowned as he
will on his personal account, he will still find it convenient, in
order to secure smooth and agreeable conditions on his way through the
world, to supplement that distinction with recommendations from the
State Department. Respect for rank is the last infirmity even of
noble republican minds, and it oils the wheels of the progress of
those who possess it. An American widow of my later acquaintance, a
lady of two marriageable daughters and small social pretensions in her
own country, toured Europe with success and distinction, getting all
the best accommodations and profoundest obeisances by the simple
device of placing the word "Lady" before her modest signature in the
hotel registers. She was a lady, of course, and had a right so to
style herself, and if snobbish persons chose to read into the word
more than it literally meant, that was not Mrs. Green's affair.

American commerce still existed in 1853, and the Liverpool consulate
was supposed to have more money in it than any other office in the
gift of the administration. As a matter of fact, several of my
father's predecessors had retired from their tenure of office with