Wave fearless, there, thou standard sheet! 
       That Yankee trunk and all it holds
     (Though Prussian hirelings throng each street)
       Is safe beneath thy starry folds!

Saying which I dismissed the humiliated concierge, took a drink, blew out the bougie, and sank into the arms of “Tired nature’s sweet restorer.”

Instances like the above are quite common among Americans in Paris.  It was only the other day at the depot of the Chemin de fer du Nord that I saw a sick Bostonian sitting on his trunk outside the gates, waiting for a chance to get into the train, with a Skye-terrier between his legs wrapped in the American flag.  You easily get accustomed to such sights, and don’t think anything about them.

Yesterday I called at the office of the American Minister.  I gave the porter my card, and asked if “WASH.” was in.  He eyed me strangely. (Most people when they first see me generally do.  I have thought sometimes that a certificate of good character posted conspicuously about my person would obviate this—­but as they say here, “n’ importe.”)

“I’ll see,” said the porter, in reply to my question.  He walked off, taking with him the door mat, an umbrella that stood in the hall, four coats and three hats that hung on the rack, besides numerous other small portable articles of vertu that would have come handy for a professional “lifter.”

I did not consider this movement a reflection upon my character, for it seemed but appropriate that he should do it.  “What,” said I to myself, “are porters for, but to remove portable articles?”

“WASH” was in, and fortunately for me, too, as I obtained a bit of news that has not yet been printed in the cable dispatches from “Private Sources.”

It came by letter from General FORSYTH, SHERIDAN’S aide-de-camp and Lord High Chamberlain, and was to the effect that SHERIDAN had not tasted a drop of whiskey or uttered an oath since landing in Germany.  WASH, asked me to communicate the fact to you with the request that you would forward it to the “Society for the Encouragement of Practical Piety” at Boston.  He also told me that, between looking after German interests in Paris and receiving ovations from enthusiastic mobs, he didn’t think he could do justice to his salary.

“WASH,” says I, “it isn’t so much that, as it is that the salary doesn’t do justice to you.  If that’s the case speak right out; PUNCHINELLO can fix it for you.”  This took WASH. so suddenly that he couldn’t speak, but his eyes were running over with language.  Don’t move in the matter, however, till you hear from me again, when I shall have something more to tell you about the march of the Prussians to this capital, and the capital march I propose to make out of it.

Yours, in a revolutionary state, DICK TINTO.

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