d his
family. But, as the publisher of a highly Radical paper--the _Bien
Informe_--De Bonneville was under espionage, and when the time came he
was not permitted to leave France. He confided his wife and children
to his friend, and they set sail with his promise to follow later. He
did follow, when he could--Washington Irving tells of chatting with
him in Battery Park--but it was too late for him to see the man who
had proved himself so true a friend to him and his.

The older De Bonneville boy was Benjamin, known affectionately by his
parents and Paine as "Bebia." He was destined to become distinguished
in the Civil War--Gen. Benjamin de Bonneville, of high military and
patriotic honours.

I said we couldn't keep to Greenwich--we have travelled to France and
back again already!

You may find the house if you care to look for it--the very same house
kept by Mrs. Ryder, where Thomas Paine lived more than a century ago.
So humble and shabby it is you might pass it by with no more notice
than you would pass a humble and shabby wayfarer. Its age and
picturesqueness do not arrest the eye; for it isn't the sort of old
house which by quaint lines and old-world atmosphere tempt the average
artist or lure the casual poet to its praise. It is just a little old
wooden building of another day, where people of modest means were wont
to live.

The caretaker there probably does not know anything about the august
memory that with him inhabits the dilapidated rooms. He doubtless
fails to appreciate the honour of placing his hand upon the selfsame
polished mahogany stair rail which our immortal "infidel's" hand once
pressed, or the rare distinction of reading his evening paper at the
selfsame window where, with his head upon his hand, that Other was
wont to read too, once upon a time.

Ugly, dingy rooms they are in that house, but glorified by
association. There is, incidentally, a mantelpiece which anyone might
envy, though now buried in barbarian paint. There are gable windows
peering out from the shingled roof. [Illustration: GROVE COURT]

Some day the Thomas Paine Association will probably buy it, undertake
the long-forgotten national obligation, and prevent it from crumbling
to dust as long as ever they can.

The caretaker keeps pets--cats and kittens and dogs and puppies. Once
he kept pigeons too, but the authorities disapproved, he told me.

"Ah, well," I said, "the authorities never have approved of things in
this hous