citizen there?"
The inspector cast an approving glance at the consul, fixed a stern eye
on the cherubic prisoner, and leaned back in his chair to hear the reply
to this terrible question.
"I don't remember," said the culprit, knitting his brows in infantine
thought. "It was either there, or at Madrid or Syracuse."
The inspector was about to rise; this was really trifling with the
dignity of the municipality. But the consul laid his hand on the
official's sleeve, and, opening an American atlas to a map of the State
of New York, said to the prisoner, as he placed the inspector's hand on
the sheet, "I see you know the names of the TOWNS on the Erie and New
York Central Railroad. But"--
"I can tell you the number of people in each town and what are the
manufactures," interrupted the young fellow, with youthful vanity.
"Madrid has six thousand, and there are over sixty thousand in"--
"That will do," said the consul, as a murmur of Wunderschon! went round
the group of listening servant girls, while glances of admiration were
shot at the beaming accused. "But you ought to remember the name of the
town where your naturalization papers were afterwards sent."
"But I was a citizen from the moment I made my declaration," said the
stranger smiling, and looking triumphantly at his admirers, "and I could
vote!"
The inspector, since he had come to grief over American geographical
nomenclature, was grimly taciturn. The consul, however, was by no means
certain of his victory. His alleged fellow citizen was too encyclopaedic
in his knowledge: a clever youth might have crammed for this with a
textbook, but then he did not LOOK at all clever; indeed, he had rather
the stupidity of the mythological subject he represented. "Leave him
with me," said the consul. The inspector handed him a precis of the
case. The cherub's name was Karl Schwartz, an orphan, missing from
Schlachtstadt since the age of twelve. Relations not living, or in
emigration. Identity established by prisoner's admission and record.
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