next day Prince Friedrich Carl
comes here,'--the left forefinger joined the thumb,--' and telegraphs the
fact, always over Berlin, to the Crown Prince, who hurries forward here.'
The forefinger of the right hand slipped quickly under the thumb as if to
pinch something, and the narrator looked up significantly.

"Perhaps the patriotic Director thought of the July afternoon when,
eagerly listening at the little mahogany-topped table, over which passed
so many momentous messages, he learned that the royal cousins had
effected a junction at Koeniggraetz, a junction that decided the fate of
Germany and secured Prussia its present proud position, a junction which
but for his modest visitor's invention, the telegraph, 'always over
Berlin,' would have been impossible."

Returning to Paris with his family, he spent some months at the Hotel de
la Place du Palais Royal, principally in collecting all the data
necessary to the completion of his report, which had been much delayed
owing to the dilatoriness of those to whom he had applied for facts and
statistics. On April 14, 1868, he says in a letter to the Honorable John
Thompson: "Pleasant as has been our European visit, with its advantages
in certain branches of education, our hearts yearn for our American home.
We can appreciate, I hope, the good in European countries, be grateful
for European hospitality, and yet be thorough Americans, as we all
profess to be notwithstanding the display of so many defects which tend
to disgrace us in the eyes of the world."

On May 18 he writes to Senator Michel Chevalier: "And now, my dear sir,
farewell. I leave beautiful Paris the day after to-morrow for my home on
the other side of the Atlantic, more deeply impressed than ever with the
grandeur of France, and the liberality and hospitality of her courteous
people, so kindly manifested to me and mine. I leave Paris with many
regrets, for my age admonishes me that, in all probability, I shall never
again visit Europe."

Sailing from Havre on the St. Laurent, on May 22, he and his family
reached, without untoward incident, the home on the Hudson, and on June
21 he writes to his son Arthur, who had remained abroad with his tutor:--

"You see by the date where we all are. Once more I am seated at my table
in the half octagon study under the south verandah. Never did the Grove
look more charming. Its general features the same, but the growth of the
trees and shrubbery greatly increased. Faithf