ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 57 



to myself, like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, " dear acres, 

 innocently secure from history, which these eyes first be- 

 held, may you be also those to which they shall at last 

 slowly darken ! " w T hen I was interrupted by a voice 

 which asked me in German whether I was the Herr Pro- 

 fessor, Doctor, So-and-so 1 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 visitations ? I was truly not at home 

 when the question was put to me, but had to recall my- 

 self from all out-of-doors, and to piece my self-conscious- 

 ness hastily together as well as I could before I an- 

 swered 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 



