Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/500

484 He immediately went in search of my son, and having found him, said, "I am not personally acquainted with your father, but I am well acquainted with his name: he has shown such kindness to a countryman of mine that every Swede would be proud of an opportunity of acknowledging it. The steamer for which you are waiting cannot arrive until a week hence. There are no accommodations in this station, not even a public-house; I entreat you to come on board my ship and be my guest until the steamer arrives and is ready to take you to Adelaide."

My son, who during the six previous months had slept under no canopy but that of heaven, accepted this delightful invitation, and enjoyed, during a week, the society of a very agreeable and highly-informed gentleman.

I have received many marks of attention of various kinds from natives of Sweden—paragraphs translated from Swedish newspapers which were peculiarly interesting to me, engravings, and printed volumes. I have been honoured with these attentions by persons in various classes of society up to the highest, and I am confident that the enlightened and accomplished Prince to whom I allude will not think me ungrateful when I avow that the most gratifying of all these attentions to a father, whose name in his own country has been useless to himself and to his children, was to hear from England's antipodes of a grateful Swede welcoming and giving hospitality on the part of his countrymen to my son for the sake of the name he bore.