another course with them. Applying myself to some friendly shipmaster, I
engaged homeward passages on their behalf, with the understanding that
they were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard; and I remember
several very pathetic appeals from painters and musicians, touching the
damage which their artistic fingers were likely to incur from handling
the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very
little tenderness for their finger-ends. In time I grew to be reasonably
hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman
with no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he invariably
averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of
ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American
ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or
another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up at his own threshold, if
he has any, without help of a Consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson of
foresight that may profit him hereafter.

Among these stray Americans, I met with no other case so remarkable as
that of an old man, who was in the habit of visiting me once in a few
months, and soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about England
more than a quarter of a century (precisely twenty-seven years, I think),
and all the while doing his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville,
in his excellent novel or biography of "Israel Potter," has an idea
somewhat similar to this. The individual now in question was a mild and
patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond
description, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and somewhat red
nose. He made no complaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a
quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious,
"I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described
himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was
a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake of