-peaked conical hat
the same tint extended. In age, he might have been anything from
two-and-thirty to forty, or upwards.

Attracted by an extraordinary attempt of the stranger to express himself
in Italian to the waiter, the young Englishman turned round, and then as
quickly leaning down towards his father, said, in a subdued voice, "Only
think; there he is again! The Yankee we met at Meurice's, at Spa, Ems,
the Righi, Como, and Heaven knows where besides! There he is talking
Italian, own brother to his French, and with the same success too!"

"Well, well, Charley," said the other, good-humoredly, "it is not from
an Englishman can come the sneer about such blunders. We make sad work
of genders and declensions ourselves; and as for our American, I rather
like him, and am not sorry to meet him again."

"You surely cannot mean that. There's not a fault of his nation that
he does not, in one shape or other, represent; and, in a word, he is a
bore of the first water."

"The accusation of boredom is one of those ugly confessions which ennui
occasionally makes of its own inability to be interested. Now, for my
part, the Yankee does not bore me. He is a sharp, shrewd man, always
eager for information."

"I 'd call him inquisitive," broke in the younger.

"There's an honest earnestness, too, in his manner,--a rough vigor--"

"That recalls stump-oratory, and that sledge-hammer school so popular
'down west.'"

"It is because he is intensely American that I like him, Charley. I
heartily respect the honest zeal with which he tells you that there are
no institutions, no country, no people to be compared with his own."

"To me, the declaration is downright offensive; and I think there is a
wide interval between prejudice and an enlightened patriotism. And when
I hear an American claim for his nation a pre-eminence, not alone
in courage, skill, and inventive genius, but in all the arts of
civilization and refinement, I own I'm at a loss whether to laugh at or
leave him."

"Take my advice, Charley, don't do either; or, if you must do one of
the two, better even the last than the first."

Half stung by the tone of reproof in these words, and half angry with
himself, perhaps, for his own petulance, the young man flung the end of
his cigar away, and walked out into the street. Scarcely, however,
had he done so when the subject of their brief controversy arose,
and approached the Englishman, saying, with a drawling tone and na