MR. HENRY K. DOTY, one of the most prominent citizens, and the leading hide and pelt dealer in the North-West, has just returned from a European tour. He has been absent about four months; and in that time he has made a visit to every European country, and has become thoroughly acquainted with the customs, manners, and languages of the different people. He spent about seventy-five thousand dollars on the trip; but this could not be called an extravagant sum when one takes into consideration the superb paintings, statuary, and other works of virtue that he brought back with him. In Paris, upon the Roo de Rivoly alone, he purchased fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of pictures; and in Brussels he bought several thousand dollars’ worth of those elegant carpets from which that city derives its name. Mr. Doty says that he was well treated everywhere except in England. He is specially bitter against Mr. Phelps, our representative at the court of St. James.

“This man Phelps,” says he, “is a little, dried-up, snobbish Vermont lawyer, with a soul no bigger than a huckleberry. I dyed my moustache, and put on my dress-suit and my twenty-thousand-dollar diamond bosom-pin, and called to see him. A fine specimen he is to represent our wealth and culture! I don’t believe his clothes cost more than twenty dollars a suit.

“‘I suppose I ought to call on the queen,’ says I.

“He didn’t say anything; and I continued, ‘Would you mind introducing me?’

“‘Really, Mr. Doty,’ says he, ‘I do not feel like presenting an entire stranger to her Majesty.’

“‘Oh! you needn’t be scared,’ says I, ‘for I carry as big a letter of credit as any American in London; and when it comes to culture, and that sort of thing, I can knock the socks off any of your lords and marqueezies.’

“Well, will you believe it? he had the impudence to shove a printed list of questions at me.

“‘You will have to answer these on oath before I can tell you whether I can present you to her Majesty,’ says he.

“I was as mad as a Texas steer. Here are some of the questions: ‘Did you ever have a grandfather? and if so, what was his vocation?’ ‘Have you contracted the toothbrush habit?’ ‘Are you addicted to the use of the double negative?’ ‘Spell phthisis, strychnine, pneumonia?’ Fine questions these to put to a gentleman worth a cool million! I told him to go to —— with his queen; and I’m going to have my private secretary write a letter to the President, complaining of Phelps, and demanding that he be discharged.”