Street, Philadelphia!" But even his desire of getting home had ceased to
be an ardent one (if, indeed, it had not always partaken of the dreamy
sluggishness of his character), although it remained his only locomotive
impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that kept his blood from
actual torpor.

The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as worthy of being
chanted in immortal song as that of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his
case into deep consideration, but dared not incur the moral
responsibility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after so many
years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed away, to find
his friends dead, or forgetful, or irretrievably vanished, and the whole
country become more truly a foreign land to him than England was now,--
and even Ninety-second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth of our
localities, made over anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes.
That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred itself to the New
Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, contenting his slow heart,
meanwhile, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns,
or the green country lanes and by-paths with which his wanderings had
made him familiar; for doubtless he had a beaten track and was the
"long-remembered beggar" now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting
ready for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice of lodging under
a score of haystacks. In America, nothing awaited him but that worst
form of disappointment which comes under the guise of a long-cherished
and late-accomplished purpose, and then a year or two of dry and barren
sojourn in an almshouse, and death among strangers at last, where he had
imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I contented myself with giving
him alms, which he thankfully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders
and an aspect of gentle forlornness; returning upon his orbit, however,
after a few months, to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in