The Old Homestead | Page 6

years, some of the distinctive characteristics of an American,
and at last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of the soil
whence he could not escape in his lifetime.
He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did not attempt to press
his advantage with any new argument, or any varied form of entreaty.
He had but scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and in the
intervals of those, like the refrain of an old ballad, came in the
monotonous burden of his appeal, "If I could only find myself in
Ninety-second 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 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 it was doubtless his present purpose to
get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. But no! The resolve to see