The Old Homestead | Page 3

the door. Passing through this
exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an inner privacy, where sat

the Consul himself, ready to give personal attention to such peculiarly
difficult and more important cases as might demand the exercise of
(what we will courteously suppose to be) his own higher judicial or
administrative sagacity.
It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in imitation of oak,
and duskily lighted by two windows looking across a by-street at the
rough brick-side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier
structure than ever was built in America. On the walls of the room hung
a large map of the United States (as they were, twenty years ago, but
seem little likely to be, twenty years hence), and a similar one of Great
Britain, with its territory so provokingly compact, that we may expect it
to sink sooner than sunder. Farther adornments were some rude
engravings of our naval victories in the War of 1812, together with the
Tennessee State House, and a Hudson River steamer, and a colored,
life-size lithograph of General Taylor, with an honest hideousness of
aspect, occupying the place of honor above the mantel-piece. On the
top of a bookcase stood a fierce and terrible bust of General Jackson,
pilloried in a military collar which rose above his ears, and frowning
forth immitigably at any Englishman who might happen to cross the
threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General's
expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of
men; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art
represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never
heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either
forgotten it altogether, or contrived to misremember, and twist it wrong
end foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught
from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many other
characteristics) this excellent method of keeping the national glory
intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of their
memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism forbade me to take down either
the bust, or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than right that
an American Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality imbedded
into the soil and institutions of England) should fairly represent the
American taste in the fine arts, and because these decorations reminded
me so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barber's shop.
One truly English object was a barometer hanging on the wall,
generally indicating one or another degree of disagreeable weather, and

so seldom pointing to Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its
circle as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its grate of
bituminous coal, was English too, as was also the chill temperature that
sometimes called for a fire at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky
atmosphere which often, between November and March, compelled me
to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omitting anything
important in the above descriptive inventory, unless it be some
book-shelves filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and
a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communications from
former Secretaries of State, and other official documents of similar
value, constituting part of the archives of the Consulate, which I might
have done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal-grate. Yes;
there was one other article demanding prominent notice: the consular
copy of the New Testament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I fear,
with a daily succession of perjured kisses; at least, I can hardly hope
that all the ten thousand oaths, administered by me between two breaths,
to all sorts of people and on all manner of worldly business, were
reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul's peril.
Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in which I spent
wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my
existence. At first, to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as
not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of so
great and prosperous a country as the United States then were; and I
should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier
apartments, except for the prudent consideration that my government
would have left me thus to support its dignity at my own personal
expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished predecessors, of whom
the latest is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found
the locality good enough for them; it might certainly be tolerated,
therefore, by an individual so little ambitious of external magnificence
as myself. So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into
such soil as I could find, adapting