16 SPOKT IN NORTH AMERICA. 



of this, I will narrate an anecdote which will bring 

 this chapter to a conclusion. 



I am about to introduce to my readers an historic 

 individual, whose career, however, is very little known 

 on this side of the Ocean. This individual is a 

 woman, still young, although eighteen years have 

 elapsed since the incident took place which I am 

 about to relate. 



About the middle of the year 1843, there arrived 

 in Washington, from Europe, an admirable creature, 

 aged seventeen, beautiful as Venus, whose charms 

 indeed she seemed to have borrowed. She had lovely 

 blue eyes and golden hair. One might have taken 

 her for one of Titian's beauties, or for one of those 

 charming goddesses or nymphs which adorn the 

 canvas of Rubens. 



A descendant of Amerigo Vespucci, who had 

 the honour of bestowing his name upon the two 

 Americas, the beautiful America Vespucci had 

 come, an orphan and penniless, to claim from Con- 

 gress a pension which would enable her to restore 

 the position of her house and revive the historic fame 

 of her ancestors. 



Unfortunately for America, the Yankees have 

 little taste for giving away anything. The Italian 

 beauty lost her cause with the representatives of the 

 " free people," but she was more fortunate with an 

 English Crcesus, who offered her his heart, and the 

 shelter of a seignorial domain on the banks of Lake 



