s jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student
beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of
America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine
hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the
bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.
Again I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five
minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life
with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three
Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,--again,
I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the
resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir;
ladies' morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-
room, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-
room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and
the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the
first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five
hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of
thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the
establishment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I
drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my
friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians
all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have
descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and
great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my
mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject. What was
I to do? What was to become of me? Into what extremity was I
submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out
for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by
training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I
might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow,
that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the
prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken
back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous
drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I
should have reject