He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance; kept me in good humour through the sittings, and when they were over, carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris.

I ate well; I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favourable likeness of the being, and I confess I thought my future was assured.

But when the bust was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so much as learn of its arrival.

The blow felled me; I should have lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of my country been involved.

For Dijon improved the opportunity in the European style; informing me (for the first time) of the manners of America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shotgun.
"The whole world knows it," he would say; "you are alone, mon petit Loudon, you are alone to be in ignorance of these facts.