Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/133

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Literary Messenger
117

draw him into conversation. But he remained dignified and reserved. At length he said that he desired to see the editor as he had called for that purpose. His surprise was very poorly concealed when he was informed that it was the editor who was trying to entertain him. He said he had expected to find an older and different person. Of course, he knew the editor's name: so he was told that no doubt an older and different man ought to be the editor of such a work and that he probably expected to meet Mr. Lucian Minor. He tried to retrieve his blunder, and the editor, to relieve his embarrassment. He was "the learned Greek," Geo. D. Perdicaris, who had been honored in Richmond and has been mentioned before. Wm. C. Bryant, George Bancroft, Park Benjamin, Horace Greeley and others may have felt a similar surprise, but if so, they concealed it better than the Greek. He was the father of the Perdicaris who was held in captivity lately in Africa. A gentleman now living in Richmond told me he had met this younger Perdicaris in Paris, France.

The Hon. J. K. Paulding, however, "set him up." He rendered the Messenger a gratifying service, for which the editor sent him, in appropriate terms, a draft for twenty dollars. Afterwards the editor called upon him at his residence in New York, when he took him to his library