way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for something solid. If
there be any better method of dealing with such junctures,--when talk is
to be created out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at
once, so that you cannot apply yourself to your interlocutor's
individuality,--I have not learned it.

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the Old World and the New,
where the steamers and packets landed the greater part of our wandering
countrymen, and received them again when their wanderings were done, I
saw that no people on earth have such vagabond habits as ourselves. The
Continental races never travel at all if they can help it; nor does an
Englishman ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the money to
spare, or proposes to himself some definite advantage from the journey;
but it seemed to me that nothing was more common than for a young
American deliberately to spend all his resources in an aesthetic
peregrination about Europe, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin
the world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener than was at all
agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to bring
them to the door of my Consulate, where they entered as if with an
undeniable right to its shelter and protection, and required at my hands
to be sent home again. In my first simplicity,--finding them gentlemanly
in manners, passably educated, and only tempted a little beyond their
means by a laudable desire of improving and refining themselves, or,
perhaps for the sake of getting better artistic instruction in music,
painting, or sculpture than our country could supply,--I sometimes took
charge of them on my private responsibility, since our government gives
itself no trouble about its stray children, except the seafaring class.
But, after a few such experiments, discovering that none of these
estimable and ingenuous young men, however trustworthy they might appear,
ever dreamed of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to take