The Old Homestead | Page 5

advantage from the journey; but it seemed to me that nothing was more
common than for a young American deliberately to spend all his
resources in an aesthetic peregrination about Europe, returning with
pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It happened, indeed,
much oftener than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held
out just long enough to bring them to the door of my Consulate, where
they entered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and protection,
and required at my hands to be sent home again. In my first
simplicity,--finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably educated,

and only tempted a little beyond their means by a laudable desire of
improving and refining themselves, or, perhaps for the sake of getting
better artistic instruction in music, painting, or sculpture than our
country could supply,--I sometimes took charge of them on my private
responsibility, since our government gives itself no trouble about its
stray children, except the seafaring class. But, after a few such
experiments, discovering that none of these estimable and ingenuous
young men, however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed of
reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to take 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 seeing the Old Country, but had never since
been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His manner and accent
did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so;
but he steadfastly affirmed, "Sir, I was born and have lived in
Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to describe some
public edifices and other local objects with which he used to be familiar,
adding, with a simplicity that touched me very closely, "Sir, I had
rather be there than here!" Though I still manifested a lingering doubt,
he took no offence, replying with the same mild depression as at first,
and insisting again and again on Ninety-second Street. Up to the time
when I saw him, he still got a little occasional job-work at his trade, but
subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings,
shifting from place to place continually, and asking assistance to
convey him to his native land. Possibly he was an impostor, one of the
multitudinous shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood
with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repetitions, he had
convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I believe, the tale was fact,
how very strange and sad was this old man's fate! Homeless on a
foreign shore, looking always towards his country, coming again and
again to the point whence so many were setting sail for it,--so many
who would soon tread in Ninety-second Street,-- losing, in this long
series of