the Grand Falconer of Reuss, and the Grand Duke of
Schlitzin-Mein, and Field Marshall Topoff, General-in-Chief
of the army of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. There are no such
figures as these in America.

But another reason for not writing has been that things
have been going so badly with us. Uncle William still
has no work and he seems to be getting older and more
broken and stranger in his talk every day. He is very
shabby now in spite of all I can do with my needle, but
he becomes more grandiloquent and consequential all the
time. Some of the mean looking young men at this boarding
house have christened him "The Emperor"--which seems a
strange thing for them to have picked upon, and they draw
him out in his talk, and when they meet him they make
mock salutes to him which Uncle returns with very great
dignity. Quite a lot of the people on the nearby streets
have taken it up and when they see Uncle come along they
make him military salutes. Uncle gets quite pleased and
flushed as he goes along the street and answers the
salutes with a sort of military bow.

He is quite happy when he is out of doors explaining to
me with his stick the plans he has for rebuilding New
York and turning the Hudson River to make it run the
other way. But when he comes in he falls into the most
dreadful depression and sometimes at night I hear him
walking up and down in his room far into the night. Two
or three times he has had the same dreadful kind of
seizures that he had on board the ship when we came over,