assed upon the details
of imaginary feasts.

One gleam of hope visited me--an order for a bust from a rich
Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance;
kept me in good humour through the sittings, and, when they were over,
carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate well, I
laid on flesh; by all accounts I made a favourable likeness of the
being, and I confess I thought my future was assured. But when the bust
was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so
much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have lain
down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of my
country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the
European style, informing me (for the first time) of the manners of
America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of
law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shot-gun.
"The whole world knows it," he would say; "you are alone, _mon petit_
Loudon--you are alone, to be in ignorance of these facts. The judges of
the Supreme Court fought but the other day with stilettos on the bench
at Cincinnati. You should read the little book of one of my friends, 'Le
Touriste dans le Far-West'; you will see it all there in good French."
At last, incensed by days of such discussion, I undertook to prove to
him the contrary, and put the affair in the hands of my late father's
lawyer. From him I had the gratification of hearing, after a due
interval, that my debtor was dead of the yellow fever in Key West, and
had left his affairs in some confusion. I suppress his name; for though
he treated me with cruel nonchalance, it is probable he meant to deal
fairly in the end.

Soon after this a shade of change in my reception at the cabman's
eating-house marked the beginning of a new phase in my distress. The
first day I told myself it was but fancy; the next, I made quite sure it
was a fact; the third, in mere panic I stayed away, and went for
forty-eight hours fasting. This was an act of great unreason; for the
debtor who stays away is but the more remarked, and the boarder who
misses a meal is sure to be accused of infidelity. On the fourth day,
therefore, I returned, inwardly quaking. The proprietor looked askance
upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters) neglected my
wants, and sniffed at the affected joviality of my salutations; last,
and most plain, when I called