46 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



up the number of men on whose backs fate has written the 

 wrong address, so that they arrive by mistake in Congress 

 and other places where they do not belong ! May not these 

 wanderers of whom I speak have been sent into the world 

 without any proper address at all? Where is our Dead- 

 Letter Office for such ? And if wiser social arrangements 

 should furnish us with something of the sort, fancy (horrible 

 thought !) how many a workingman s friend (a kind of in 

 dustry in which the labour is light and the wages heavy) 

 would be sent thither because not called for in the office 

 where he at present lies ! 



But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under the 

 lamp-post. The same Gano which had betrayed me to him 

 revealed to me a well-set young man of about half my own 

 age, as well dressed, so far as I could see, as I was, and 

 with every natural qualification for getting his own livelihood, 

 as good, if not better, than my own. He had been reduced 

 to the painful necessity of calling upon me by a series of 

 crosses beginning with the Baden Revolution (for which, I 

 own, he seemed rather young but perhaps he referred to a 

 kind of revolution practised every season at Baden-Baden), 

 continued by repeated failures in business, for amounts 

 which must convince me of his entire respectability, and 

 ending with our Civil War. During the latter he had served 

 with distinction as a soldier, taking a main part in every 

 important battle, with a rapid list of which he favoured me, 

 and no doubt would have admitted that, impartial as Jona 

 than Wild s great ancestor, he had been on both sides, had I 

 baited him with a few hints of conservative opinions on a 

 subject so distressing to a gentleman wishing to profit by 

 one s sympathy and unhappily doubtful as to which way it 

 might lean. For all these reasons, and, as he seemed to 

 imply, for his merit in consenting to be born in Germany, he 

 considered himself my natural creditor to the extent of five 

 dollars, which he would handsomely consent to accept in 

 greenbacks, though he preferred specie. The offer was cer 

 tainly a generous one, and the claim presented with an 

 assurance that carried conviction. But, unhappily, I had 

 been led to remark a curious natural phenomenon. If I was 

 ever weak enough to give anything to a petitioner of what 

 ever nationality, it always rained decayed compatriots of his 

 for a month after. Post hoc ergo propter hoc may not be 



