England for more than twenty-seven years, in all which time he had been
endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as ever, to find his way
home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia.

I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, but still with a
foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, which impresses me now more
forcibly than it did at the moment. One day, a queer, stupid,
good-natured, fat-faced individual came into my private room, dressed in
a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both garments worn and
shabby, and rather too small for his overgrown bulk. After a little
preliminary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper (from
Connecticut, I think), who had left a flourishing business, and come over
to England purposely and solely to have an interview with the Queen.
Some years before he had named his two children, one for her Majesty and
the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of the
little people, as well as of his wife and himself, to the illustrious
godmother. The Queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in a letter
under the hand of her private secretary. Now, the shopkeeper, like a
great many other Americans, had long cherished a fantastic notion that he
was one of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate; and on the
strength of her Majesty's letter and the hopes of royal patronage which
it inspired, he had shut up his little country-store and come over to
claim his inheritance. On the voyage, a German fellow-passenger had
relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it favorably exchanged,
and had disappeared immediately on the ship's arrival; so that the poor
fellow was compelled to pawn all his clothes, except the remarkably
shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which (as he himself hinted,
with a melancholy, yet good-natured smile) he did not look altogether fit
to see the Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat and mixed
trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, and suggested that