each
other with wordless sorrow in their eyes. I think there were tears as
well.

CHAPTER XVII

SOME OF THE OLD LANDMARKS

"Yes, all of us," said Ben. "We can tuck in the Deans. I only wish
Charles could go. Well, the house won't run away. And Mr. Audubon has
travelled all over the world. Mr. Whitney wrote an article about him.
That's the work I'd like to do--go and see famous people and write about
them."

Interviewing was not such a fine art in those days. Ben had enough of it
later on.

Dr. Joe had asked Mr. Audubon's permission to bring a crowd of children
to see him and his birds. He was getting to be quite an attraction in
the city.

When they packed up they found a crowd sure enough. But Dr. Hoffman took
Margaret and the little girl with him, as Charles had been allowed a
half day off for the trip. The drive was so full of interest. They went
up past the old Stuyvesant place and took a look at the pear-tree that
had been planted almost two hundred years ago and was still bearing
fruit. Then they turned into the old Bloomingdale Road, and up by
Seventy-fifth Street they all stopped to see the house where Louis
Philippe taught school when he was an emigrant in America. And now he
was on the throne, King of the French people, a grander and greater
position, some thought, than being President of the United States.

"For of course," said Jim, "he can stay there all his life, and the
President has only four years in the White House. After all, it is a big
thing to be a king."

And in a little more than two years he was flying over to England for
refuge and safety, and was no longer a king. Mr. Polk was still in the
White House.

It was an odd, low, two-story frame house where royalty had been
thankful to teach such boys as Ben and Jim and Charles. There was a
steep, sloping roof with wide eaves, a rather narrow doorway in the
middle of the front, carved with very elaborate work, and an old knocker
with a lion's head, small but fierce. The large room on one side had
been the schoolroom, and the board floor was worn in two curious rows
where the boys had shuffled their feet. The fireplace was what most
people came to see. It was spacious and had a row of blue and white
Antwerp tiles with pictures taken from the New Testament. They were
smoked and faded now, but they still told their story. The mantelpiece
and the doors were a mass of the most elaborate carving.

There were still some old houses st