his table with a huge German volume open
before him. His greeting was very hearty, but, with a comical look of
surprise, he said in broad Scotch: "You are a verra young mon." I told
him of the appetite we college boys had for his books, and he assured me
at once that while he had met some of our eminent literary men he had
never happened to meet a college boy before. "Your Mr. Longfellow," said
he, "called to see me yesterday. He is a man skilled in the tongues.
Your own name I see is Dootch. The word 'Cuyler' means a delver, or one
who digs underground. You must be a Dutchman." I told him that my
ancestors had come over from Holland a couple of centuries ago, and I
was proud of my lineage; for my grandfather, Glen Cuyler, was a
descendant of Hendrick Cuyler, one of the early Dutch settlers of
Albany, who came there in 1667. "Ah," said he, "the Dootch are the
brawvest people of modern times. The world has been rinnin' after a red
rag of a Frenchman; but he was nothing to William the Silent. When
Pheelip of Spain sent his Duke of Alva to squelch those Dutchmen they
joost squelched him like a rotten egg--aye, _they did_."

I asked him why he didn't visit America, and told him that I had
observed his name registered at Ambleside, on Lake Windermere. "Nae,
nae," said he, "I never scrabble my name in public places." I explained
that it was on the hotel register that I had seen "Thomas Carlyle." "It
was not mine," he replied, "I never travel only when I ride on a horse
in the teeth of the wind to get out of this smoky London. I would like
to see America. You may boast of your Dimocracy, or any other 'cracy, or
any other kind of political roobish, but the reason why your laboring
folk are so happy is that you have a vast deal of land for a very few
people." In this racy, picturesque vein he ran on for an hour in the
most cordial, good humor. He was then in his prime, hale and athletic,
with a remarkably keen blue eye, a strong lower jaw and stiff iron gray
hair, brushed up from a capacious forehead; and he had a look of a
sturdy country deacon dressed up on a Sunday morning for church. He was
very carefully attired in a new suit that day for visiting, and, as I
rose to leave, he said to me: "I am going up into London and I will walk
wi' ye." We sallied out and he strode the pavement with long strides
like a plowman. I told him I had just come from the land of Burns, and
that the old man at the native cottage of the poet had dr