have only to tell him it's
Tomkins; he'll be overjoyed to see me." "I travelled with him from
Manchester to Bridgeport; he'll remember me when he sees me; I lent him
a wrapper in the train." "I knew his son Menotti when at school." "I was
in New York when Garibaldi was a chandler, and I was always asking
for his candles;" such and suchlike were the claims which would not
be denied. At last the infliction became insupportable. Some nights
of unusual pain and suffering required that every precaution against
excitement should be taken, and measures were accordingly concerted how
visitors should be totally excluded. There was this difficulty in the
matter, that it might fall at this precise moment some person of real
consequence might have, or some one whose presence Garibaldi would
really have been well pleased to enjoy. All these considerations were,
however, postponed to the patient's safety, and an order was sent to
the several hotels where strangers usually stopped to announce that
Garibaldi could not be seen.

"There is a story," said my companion, "which I have heard more than
once of this period, but for whose authenticity I will certainly not
vouch. _Se non vero e' ben trovato_, as regards the circumstance. It
was said that a party of English ladies had arrived at the chief hotel,
having come as a deputation from some heaven-knows-what association in
England, to see the General, and make their own report on his health,
his appearance, and what they deemed his prospect of perfect recovery.
They had come a very long journey, endured a considerable share of
fatigues and certain police attentions, which are not exactly what
are called amenities. They had come, besides, on an errand which might
warrant a degree of insistance even were they--which they were not--of
an order that patiently puts up with denial. When their demand for
admission was replied to by a reference to the general order excluding
all visitors, they indignantly refused to be classed in such a category.
They were not idle tourists, or sensation-hunting travellers. They were
a deputation! They came from the Associated Brothers and Sisters
of Freedom--from the Branch Committee of the Ear of Crying
Nationalities--they were not to be sent away in this light and
thoughtless manner.

"The correspondence was animated. It lasted the whole day, and the
last-sent epistle of the ladies bore the date of half-past eleven at
night. This was a document of startlin