Note 16 — LETTER IX. To R. Cooper, Esq., Cooperstown.

Under this arrangement, two or three years later, an applicant was sent for examination, under very peculiar circumstances. The man represented himself to be a shopkeeper of Baltimore, who had come to England with his wife and child, to purchase goods. He had been robbed of all he had, according to his account of the matter, about a thousand pounds in sovereigns, and was reduced to want, in a strange country. After trying all other means, in vain, he bethought him of coming to Paris, to apply to General La Fayette, for succour. He had just money enough to do this, having left his wife in Liverpool. He appeared with an English passport, looked like an Englishman, and had even caught some of the low English idioms, such as, “I am agreeable,” for “it is agreeable to me,” or, “I agree to do so,” &c. &c. The writer was exceedingly puzzled to decide as to this man’s nationality. At length, in describing his journey to Paris, he said, “they took my passport from me, when we got to the lines.” This settled the matter, as no one but an American would call a frontier, the lines. He proved, in the end, to be an American, and a great rogue.