" You are making a Baltimorean of me, you are so



428 ON BOTH SIDES.
awfully kind to me" he would say, pronouncing the a
in Bal as he would have done in sal ; but the truth was
that he had become primarily a Bascomite and only
very incidentally a Baltimorean. The city counts hun-
dreds of such converts every year. He was so happy
and entirely content that he would have quite forgotten
what it was to be bored just at this period but for cer-
tain individuals, — a boastful, disagreeable Irishman, who
fastened upon him apparently for no other reason than
that he might abuse England at great length and talk
of his own valor, accomplishments, and "paddygree"
(as he very properly called the record that established
his connection with Brian Boroo and Irish kings gener-
ally), and a lady who seemed to take the most astound-
ing, unquenchable interest in the English nobility, as
more than one lady had seemed to him to do, to his
great annoyance.
