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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 413
overtook me and engulphed me afterwards, is true. But I am like
the merchant of my favourite poet : I still hope—ay, at sixty-three !
—to mend my shattered ships, indocilis pauperiem pati. I still
hope to pay back to my dear boy that fortune which ought to have
been his, and which went down in my own shipwreck. Something
tells me I must !—I will !
" I agree with you that your escape from Agnes Twysden has
been a piece of good fortune for you, and am much diverted by
your account of her dusky innamorato ! Between ourselves, the
fondness of the Twysdens for money amounted to meanness. And
though I always received Twysden in dear Old Parr Street, as I
trust a gentleman should, his company was insufferably tedious to
me, and his vulgar loquacity odious. His son also was little to my
taste. Indeed I was heartily relieved when I found your connection
with that family was over, knowing their rapacity about money,
and that it was your fortune, not you, they were anxious to secure
for Agnes.
"You will be glad to hear that I am in not inconsiderable
practice already. My reputation as a physician had preceded me
to this country. My work on Gout was favourably noticed here,
and in Philadelphia, and in Boston, by the scientific journals of
those great cities. People are more generous and compassionate
towards misfortune here than in our cold-hearted island. I could
mention several gentlemen of New York who have suffered shipwreck
like myself, and are now prosperous and respected. I had
the good fortune to be of considerable professional service to Colonel
J. B. Fogle, of New York, on our voyage out ; and the Colonel,
who is a leading personage here, has shown himself not at all ungrateful.
Those who fancy that at New York people cannot
appreciate and understand the manners of a gentleman, are not a
little mistaken; and a man who, like myself, has lived with the
best society in London, has, I flatter myself, not lived in that
society quite in vain. The Colonel is proprietor and editor of one
of the most brilliant and influential journals of the city. You know
that arms and the toga are often worn here by the same individual,
and __________
" I had actually written thus far when I read in the Colonel's
paper—the New York Emerald—an account of your battle with
your cousin at the Embassy ball! Oh, you pugnacious Philip!
Well, young Twysden was very vulgar, very rude and overbearing,
and, I have no doubt, deserved the chastisement you gave him.
By the way, the correspondent of the Emerald makes some droll
blunders regarding you in his letter. We are all fair game for
publicity in this country, where the press is free with a vengeance;