in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes,
like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never
dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that
respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have _bonnes fortunes_ as well as
Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had _bonnes fortunes_, or ever dreamed of
such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who
would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just _inter nos_ (the
only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don
Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as
lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him
coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a
peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,'
and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why
didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he
was a poor, weak creature, _all gone to imagination_! Then I would
assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear
sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become
exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid
him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking
with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the
floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with
indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady
of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and
with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India,
to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear
Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the
world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest
idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once,
when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody,
and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with
extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I
made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what
some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his
mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his
great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he
had once said to hims