ridiculous despair, at this moment, and appreciate, better than I could
then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. For years
and years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his
poor foolish mind; and now, when he really stood on English ground, and
the palace-door was hanging ajar for him, he was expected to turn brick,
a penniless and bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted
consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had his demand
ultimately sunk) to buy a second-class ticket on the rail for London!

He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, subsisting on a
pittance that I allowed him in the hope of gradually starving him back to
Connecticut, assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity,
looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tempered,
mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears, not without a perception
of the ludicrousness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared
altogether, and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever saw the
Queen, or wasted quite away in the endeavor, I never knew; but I remember
unfolding the "Times," about that period, with a daily dread of reading
an account of a ragged Yankee's attempt to steal into Buckingham Palace,
and how he smiled tearfully at his captors and besought them to introduce
him to her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that he ought to
make diplomatic remonstrances to the British Ministry, and require them
to take such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits
of our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles and thanking them
for their photographs.

One circumstance in the foregoing incident--I mean the unhappy
storekeeper's notion of establishing his claim to an English estate--was
common to a great many other applications, personal or by letter, with
which I was favored by my countrymen. The cause of this peculiar