desirous to hear accounts of my
travels. I might as well have joined a party of personally conducted
tourists.

My friends and acquaintances in town were all glad to see me, not that
they might hear what had happened to me, but that they might tell me
what had happened to them. This disposition sometimes threw me into a
state of absolute amazement. I could not comprehend, for instance, why
Mrs. Gormer, who had known me for years, and who I thought would take
such an active interest in everything that concerned me, should dismiss
my European tour with a few remarks in regard to my health in the
countries I had passed through, and then begin an animated account of
the troubles she had had since I had been away: how the house she had
been living in had had two feet of water in the cellar for weeks at a
time, and how nobody could find out whether it was caused by a spring in
the ground or the bursting of an unknown water-pipe,--but no matter what
it was, they couldn't stay there; and what a dreadful time they had in
finding another house; and how the day appointed for Jennie's wedding
coming directly in the middle of the moving, it had to be postponed, for
she declared she would never be married anywhere but at home; and how
several of Mr. Barclay's relations came down from New Hampshire on
purpose to be at the wedding, and had to stay either at hotels or with
friends, for it was more than a week before her house could be made
ready for the wedding. She then remarked that of course I had heard of
the shameful way in which John had been treated in regard to that
position in the Treasury department at Washington; and as I had not
heard she went on and told me about it, until it was time for me to go.

At my club, some of the men did not know that I had been away, but there
were others who were very glad to hear that I had been in Europe,
because it gave them an opportunity to tell me about that very exciting
election of Brubaker, a man of whom I had never heard, who had been
proposed by Shuster, with whom I was not acquainted, and seconded by
Cushman, whom I did not know. I found no one desirous of hearing me talk
about my travels, and those who were willing to do so were satisfied
with a very few general points. Sometimes I could not but admire the
facility and skill with which some of the people who stay at home were
able to defend themselves against the attempted loquacity of the
returned traveler.

Occasionally, in soc