taste from his grandfather, who had perambulated the country with a tray covered with the most useless ornaments (like a magnified chess-board) upon his head. When he was twenty years old Sanguinetti lost his father and got his share of the patrimony, with which he immediately came to Europe, where he had lived these seventeen years. When I first saw him on coming to Paris, I asked him if he meant never to go back to New York, and I very well remember his answer: "My dear fellow" (in a very mournful tone), "what can you get there? The things are all second-rate, and during the Louis Quinze period, you know, our poor dear country was really—really—" And he shook his head very slowly and expressively.
I answered that there were (as I had been told) very good spinning-wheels and kitchen-settles, but he rejoined that he cared only for that which was truly elegant. He was a most simple-minded and amiable little bachelor, and would have done anything possible to oblige a friend, but he made no secret of his conviction thaf "pretty things" were the only things in the world worth troubling one's self about. He was very near-sighted, and was always putting up his glass to look at something on your chimney-piece or your side-table. He had a lingering, solemn way of talking about the height of Madame de Pompadour's heels and the different
