d _au fond_, having read _Das Hotel wesen der Gegenwart_, a
very remarkable work, and passed more than twenty years of my life in
hotels in all countries.

I can remember that during the first year of my residence in England I
tried to persuade a chemist to import from South America the _coca_ leaf,
of which not an ounce was then consumed in Europe. Weston the walker
brought it into fashion "later on." I had heard extraordinary and
authentic accounts of its enabling Indian messengers to run all day from
a friend who had employed them. Apropos of this, "I do recall a wondrous
pleasant tale." My cousin, Godfrey Davenport, a son of the Uncle Seth
mentioned in my earlier life, owned what was regarded as the model
plantation of Louisiana. My brother Henry visited him one winter, and
while there was kindly treated by a very genial, hospitable neighbouring
planter, whom I afterwards met at my father's house in Philadelphia. He
was a good-looking, finely-formed man, lithe and active as a panther--the
_replica_ of Albert Pike's "fine Arkansas gentleman." And here I would
fain disquisit on Pike, but type and time are pressing. Well, this
gentleman had one day a difference of opinion with another planter, who
was, like himself, a great runner, and drawing his bowie knife, pursued
him on the run, _twenty-two miles_, ere he "got" his victim. The
distance was subsequently measured and verified by the admiring
neighbours, who put up posts in commemoration of such an unparalleled
pedestrian feat.

When I returned to Brighton, after getting into lodgings, I began to
employ or amuse myself in novel fashion. Old Gentilla Cooper, the gypsy,
had an old brother named Matthias, a full-blood Romany, of whom all his
people spoke as being very eccentric and wild, but who had all his life a
fancy for picking up the old "Egyptian" tongue. I engaged him to come to
me two or three times a week, at half-a-crown a visit, to give me lessons
in it. As he had never lived in houses, and, like Regnar Lodbrog, had
never slept under a fixed roof, unless when he had taken a nap in a
tavern or stable, and finally, as his whole life had been utterly that of
a gypsy in the roads, at fairs, or "by wood and wold as outlaws wont to
do," I found him abundantly original and interesting. And as on account
of his eccentricity and amusing gifts he had always been welcome in every
camp or tent, and was watchful withal and crafty, there was not a phase,
hole