44 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS, 



darken ! when I was interrupted by a voice which asked me 

 in German whether I was the Herr Professor, Doctor, So- 

 and-So ? The Doctor was by brevet or vaticination, to 

 make the grade easier to my pocket. 



One feels so intimately assured that he is made up, in 

 part, of shreds and leavings of the past, in part of the 

 interpolations of other people, that an honest man would be 

 slow in saying yes to such a question. But my name is 

 So-and-So is a safe answer, and I gave it. While I had 

 been romancing with myself, the street lamps had been 

 lighted, and it was under one of these detectives that have 

 robbed the Old Road of its privilege of sanctuary after 

 nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe. The inexorable 

 villain had taken my description, it appears, that I might 

 have the less chance to escape him. Dr. Holmes tells us 

 that we change our substance, not every seven years, as was 

 once believed, but with every breath we draw. Why had I 

 not the wit to avail myself of the subterfuge, and, like Peter, 

 to renounce my identity, especially as, in certain moods of 

 mind, I have often more than doubted of it myself? When 

 a man is, as it were, his own front door, and is thus knocked 

 at, why may he not assume the right of that sacred wood to 

 make every house a castle, by denying himself to all visita 

 tions ? I was truly not at home when the question was put 

 to me, but had to recall myself from all out-of-doors, and to 

 piece my self-consciousness hastily together as well as I 

 could before I answered it. 



I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom 

 that debtors or good Samaritans waylay people under gas 

 lamps in order to force money upon them, so far as I have 

 seen or heard. I was also aware, from considerable experi 

 ence, that every foreigner is persuaded that, by doing this 

 country the favour of coming to it, he has laid every native 

 thereof under an obligation, pecuniary or other, as the case 

 may be, whose discharge he is entitled to on demand duly 

 made in person or by letter. Too much learning (of this 

 kind) had made me mad in the provincial sense of the word. I 

 had begun life with the theory of giving something to every 

 beggar that came along, though sure of never finding a 

 native-born countryman among them. In a small way, I 

 was resolved to emulate Hatem Tai s tent, with its three 

 hundred and sixty-five entrances, one for every day in the 



