ginnin'
to end. When he had done it he looked down at me, and then he went back
up stairs a-follered by the flunk, which last pretty soon came down
ag'in an' told me I was to go up. I don't think I ever felt so much
like a wringed-out dish-cloth as I did when I went up them palatial
stairs. But I tried to think of things that would prop me up. P'r'aps,
I thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his'n; who
knows? An' I might 'a' been switched off on some female line, an' so
lost the name an' estates. At any rate, be brave! With such thoughts as
these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin'. We went
through two or three rooms (I hadn't time to count 'em) an' then I was
showed into the lofty presence of the earl. He was standin' by the
fire-place, an' the minnit my eyes lit upon him I knowed it was him."

"Why, how was that?" cried Euphemia and myself almost in the same
breath.

"I knowed him by his wax figger," continued Pomona, "which Jone and I
see at Madame Tussaud's wax-works. They've got all the head people of
these days there now, as well as the old kings and the pizeners. The
clothes wasn't exactly the same, though very good on each, an' there
was more of an air of shortenin' of the spine in the wax figger than in
the other one. But the likeness was awful strikin'.

"'Well, my good woman,' says he, a-holdin' my open letter in his hand,
'so you want to see a lord, do you?'"

"What on earth did you write to him?" exclaimed Euphemia. "You mustn't
go on a bit further until you have told what was in your letter."

"Well," said Pomona, "as near as I can remember, it was like this:
'_William, Lord Cobden, Earl of Sorsetshire an' Derry. Dear Sir. Bein'
brought up under Republican institutions, in the land of the free--'_ I
left out '_the home of the brave_' because there wasn't no use crowin'
about that jus' then--'_I haven't had no oppertunity of meetin' with a
individual of lordly blood. Ever since I was a small girl takin' books
from the circulatin' libery, an' obliged to read out loud with divided
sillerbles, I've drank in every word of the tales of lords and other
nobles of high degree, that the little shops where I gen'rally got my
books, an' some with the pages out at the most excitin' parts,
contained. An' so I asks you now, Sir Lord--_' I did put _humbly_, but
I scratched that out, bein' an American woman--'_to do me the favor of
a short audience. Then, when I reads about noble earls an