and wit, as Halleck greets you with the zest of a rural visitor refreshed by the sight of “old, familiar faces”; anon comes Bancroft, a chronicler of America’s past, yet moving sympathetically through living history the while; Verplanck, the Knickerbocker Nestor, and the gentlemen of the old school represented by Irving’s old friend, the companionable and courteous Governor Kemble; pensive, olive-cheeked, sad-eyed Hamlet, in the person of Edwin Booth, our native histrionic genius; Vandyke-looking Charles Elliot, the portrait-painter; Paez, the exiled South American general; Farragut, the naval hero; Hancock, Hooker, Barlow, or some other gallant army officer,—­volunteer heroes, maimed veterans of the Union war; merchants, whose names are synonymous with beneficence and integrity; artists, whose landscapes have revealed the loveliness of this hemisphere to the Old World; women who lend grace to society and feed the poor; men of science, who alleviate, and of literature, who console, the sorrows of humanity; the stanch in friendship, the loyal in national sentiment, the indomitable in duty, the exemplary in Christian faith, the tender and true in domestic life,—­the redeeming and recuperative elements of civic society.

* * * * *

MY HEATHEN AT HOME.

Kicking my “Dutch wife,"[3] that comfortable Batavian device, to the foot of the bed, and turning over with a delicious stretch just as day began to dawn, I opened my eyes with a drowsy sense of refreshing favor,—­a half-dream, mixed of burning and breeze,—­and discovered old Karlee, my pearl of bhearers,[4] waiting in still patience on the outside of the tent-like mosquito curtain, punka in hand, and tenderly waving a balmy blessing across the sirocco-plagued sand of my slumber.

“Good morning, Karlee.”

“Salaam, Sahib-bhote-bhote salaam![5] Master catch plenty good isleep this night, Karlee hope.”

“So, so,—­so, so.  But you look happy this morning; your eyes are bright, and your kummerbund[6] jaunty, and you sport a new turban.  What’s the good news, old man?”

“Yes, Sahib.  Large joy Karlee have got,—­happy kismut,[7]—­too much jolly good luck, master, please.”

“Aha!  I’m glad of it.  None too jolly for my patient Karlee, I’ll engage,—­not a whit too happy and proud for my faithful, grateful, humble old man.  And what is it?”

“By master’s favor, one man-child have got; one fine son he come this night, please master’s graciousness.”

“A son—­your wife!—­what, you, Karlee, you?”

“Please master’s pardon, no,—­Karlee wife, no; Karlee daughter, Karlee ison-in-law, one man-child have catch this night, by Sahib’s merciful goodness.”