Could we not help to regain it?
Here was the secret of the grandson's splendid zeal.

The little fellow was fighting to hitch the old hotel to a star once more, as Emerson had bidden.
Alas, it was in vain; for that was seven years ago, and I see that Baedeker still withholds the distinction.

What a variety of misfortune this little world holds! While some of us are indulging our right to be unhappy over a thousand trivial matters, such as illness and disillusion, there are inn-keepers on the Continent who are staggering and struggling under real blows.
I wondered if it were better to have had a star and lost it, than never to have had a star at all.

But I did not ask.

The old lady's grief was too poignant, her mind too practical, for such questions.
S'Gravenhage or Den Haag, or The Hague as we call it, being the seat of the court, is at once the most civilised and most expensive of the Dutch cities.