Various

The next morning saw Richard at the bookseller’s door, full ten minutes before the appointed time. Around his slender throat was the promised handkerchief; and there was an air of gentility about the lad, though under evident restraint, in his threadbare best clothes. He was neither tall nor large of his age, yet he had outgrown his dress: to look at him when his cloth cap (from which depended a worn tassel, brown with age,) was on, you would have thought that his eyes were too large for his small, delicate features; but when that was removed, and the pale, full, well-developed brow, shaded by an abundance of light-brown hair, was displayed, then the schoolmaster’s son had an air, despite his ill-fitting clothes, his patched shoes, his sunken cheeks, and the cold, mercilessly blue “handkerchief” round his throat, of the highest and most earnest intelligence. What most rendered him different from other boys, however, was his frequent habit of uplooking: there was nothing weak or silly in this manner, nor did his eyes wander away from the things around him, as if he heard them not; his large, quick eyes, bright and gray, were rapid and observant; but it was as if he carried what he saw below to be judged above; his leisure looks were “uplooking,” his slight figure was erect, and he never slouched in his gait, or dragged his feet after him, as many lads are apt to do. As he stood at his new master’s door, in the gray fog of a London morning, he longed for the door to open; he longed to begin work; he thought the clocks were all wrong; and, though there was hardly a creature moving in the streets, except a stray cat or a slip-shod charwoman, he would have it that the entire London population were a set of slug-a-beds, unworthy of the name of Britons; for he had great veneration for Britons, and when he used to write impromptu copies on the broken slate, his favorite sentence was “Rule Britannia.”

At last he heard doors opening beneath the area gratings, and in due time the shop-door was unbarred by a not very clean-faced woman, who inquired—

“Are you the new boy?” Richard said he was. “Well,” added the woman, looking him over carefully, “when master had a mind to get a new boy, he might have got something with flesh on its bones, and stout arms. Sorra a much joy I’ll have wid a shrimpeen of a child like you in the house. Sorra a helping hand at the knives, or shoes, or messages, I’ll go bail!”

“Indeed I can do every thing you want, and bring you all you wish,” said Richard, cheerfully.

“Bring me all I wish!” repeated the Irish servant, in a low, desponding tone. “Oh, then, hear to the presumption of youth! May be, you think I’m like yer mother, and that all my wishes end in a half-pint of beer, or a glass of gin?”

Richard felt his susceptible blood rush over his face. “My mother,” he said, “never took a glass of gin in her life!”

She looked fixedly at him, and gradually her huge mouth expanded into a smile. “Yer a better boy than I thought ye, though you can’t bring me all I wish; you can’t bring me my two fine boys back from the withered church-yard; you can’t bring me back my strength, my heart, my youth, my gay, bright youth! All I wish! Och, wirrasthue! if I had all I wish, it’s not in slavery I’d be in an airee all day, with a poor lone man for a master, that thinks the world and its sunshine is made out of musty books—and newspapers—that I can’t get the reading of. Can you read?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you’ll read me a bit of the news—the reale newspaper, political news—not your po-leece thrash, but the States of Europe—I’ll stand yer friend.”

Richard followed her down stairs, wondering what interest such a deplorable looking woman could possibly take in the “States of Europe.” She told him what to do, concerning knives and shoes and coat-brushing, and left him to do it; but the “all” was so very little, that, in addition to her directions, he made up the fire and swept the hearth; and his habits of order and quickness gave the small, dismal kitchen an air of neatness approaching to comfort, which perhaps it had never before exhibited during the dynasty of “Matty Hayes.” It was this good woman’s habit always to speak in a tone of injured innocence. She anticipated that every thing must go wrong, and she met the evil half-way, with a sort of grim exultation. She delighted in contradiction; and would contradict herself, rather than not contradict at all. There was, however, as is usual with her “people,” an under-current of good-nature coursing round her heart, which rendered her speech and action two different and opposite things.

“Master’s shoes nor coat aint ready, of course?” she called from the landing. In a moment Richard’s light feet flew up the stairs, and he laid them on her bony arms.

“Then I’m sure he’s let the fire out, if these are done,” she muttered to herself. “There never was a boy that did not undo ten things while he did one!”

When she descended, she looked round, silenced by the change Richard had wrought in the den of a kitchen, and hardly knowing whether she ought to blame or praise.

“I don’t mean to pay you for all this fine work,” she said; “and there’s no breakfast for you—no, nor bit nor sup—it’s as much as I can do to manage for us three—master, and I, and Peter.”

“I have had my breakfast, thank you; and as I can do nothing here, I will go up stairs, if you will be so good as to tell me what I can do there.”

“Tell you what to do,” she repeated. “Are you an apprentice, that you want teaching? A pretty boy, indeed, you are for a place, if you can’t take down shutters, and sweep and dust a shop, and clean windows—I dare say you’ll break ’em when you do—and mop the pavement (always do that in frosty weather, like the doctor’s boy next door, to break people’s legs, and make a job of their precious limbs)—and sweep the snow over the slides, that the old people may slider about for your amusement.”

Richard felt a choking sensation at his throat, and as usual he flushed, but tried not to look angry.

“There!” she exclaimed, “don’t give me any impudence: quick lads are always impudent. I thought how it would be when you were so mighty neat.”

During this unsavory dialogue, and in direct opposition to her declared intention, she was cutting a remarkably thick piece of bread and butter; and having done so, she pushed it to the boy, saying—“There, go to your work now, and don’t say you are starved by Matthew Whitelock’s housekeeper.”

Richard was a peace-loving lad: he saw the storm gathering in Matty’s face, and, notwithstanding his boasted breakfast (he had slipped back one of the pieces of bread his mother had given him) he could from any other hands have eaten the bread with great goÛt; but the hands that fed him from infancy were delicately clean and white, and—it might be the darkness and murkiness of a January morning, but every thing, and above all things Matty, looked fearfully dirty—a favorite proverb of his mother’s took possession of his mind—

“Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

But he loved peace, and he thanked “Matthew Whitelock’s housekeeper;” simply repeating that he had breakfasted. Matty was a resolute woman; she had made up her mind he should eat what she had prepared; and, consequently, laying her massive hands upon his shoulders, she forced him suddenly down upon a chair, from which he as suddenly sprang up as from an air cushion, but not before a most unearthly howl intimated that he had pressed too heavily upon “Peter,” a rough, gray terrier, who, in these days, when tangled, ragged dogs are the fashion, would have been called a “beauty.”

“And that’s your thanks, Peter, my darlin’ for not biting him, to have him scrunch down upon you, as if you war a cat,” she exclaimed; then, turning suddenly upon poor Richard, she commanded him to eat at once, and be done with it, and not stand there aggravating her, and murdering her dog.

At first Richard ate with a feeling of disgust; but the bread was good, and he was hungry. Peter seated himself before the lad, rising every second moment on his haunches, and making little twitching movements with his fore-paws: Richard gave him a piece of the crumb.

“Look at that, now,” said Matty; “ye’ just give the poor innocent baste the crumb, because ye’ don’t like it ye’rself.”

Richard presented him with a bit of the crisp brown crust.

“See, now, if that brat of a boy ain’t trying already to break every tooth in the creature’s head with his crusts.”

Richard finished without offering Peter another morsel.

“Well!” ejaculated his tormentor, “if ever I saw such a selfish boy of yer age, and that’s speaking volumes, as master says; not to give the brute the last crumb, for good luck; but some has no nature in ’em; and the poor baste bobbing at you, as if you had never scrooged him into a pancake. There, go along, do; and, harkee! if you run the window-bars through the glass, you’ll have to pay for every pane you break: and mind the trap that’s over the cellar: but sure you war here before, when I was sick. Ah! I dare say you’ll go off in consumption, just as the last boy did: it’s all along the smell of the old books, and the ile of the papers, to say nothing of the gas. I wonder how master and I live through it; but it wont be for long, I’m certain of that; I’m a poor fading-away crature.”

As Richard ran up the dark stairs, he could not avoid turning to look at the “fading-away crature.” The cheerful blaze of the fire threw her figure into strong light, and her shadow on the wall grew up into the ceiling. She recalled all Richard had ever heard of “ogres”—so gaunt, and strong, and terrible—tremendous people who trouble the world forever, and never die.

Richard entered the shop with the feeling of a governor going to take the command of a new province. Could it be absolutely real, that he was the appointed messenger to go in and out, backward and forward, amongst such a multitude of books! To him the store seemed more than ever immense. Surely Mr. Whitelock must have added hundreds to his hundreds since he stood upon that threshold to help the poor dying boy. He recalled the feeling of awe with which he regarded that dingy interior; he thought Mr. Whitelock must be the happiest man in the world, not only to live amongst so many books, but to be their absolute owner; he wondered how he could bear to sell them: he resolved to count them; and thrilled from head to foot at the new-born pleasure—even in anticipation—that perhaps he might be permitted to read them. There was a delight; to read every one of the books that filled these shelves! But then came the thought that, however delicious it would be to get all that knowledge into his head, it would do his mother no real good, unless he could put the knowledge so acquired in practice: yes, put it in practice, to make money and means sufficient to keep his mother—his loving, tender, gentle mother—who seemed threatened with a terrible affliction; to keep her from want—from cold—from every apprehension of distress. Richard never stood idly to muse: no, he thought. His thoughts were active—strong, too, for a boy of his years; and they came abundantly while he occupied himself with his duties; fine, healthy, earnest thoughts they were—sanctified by an unexpressed, yet fervent, prayer to the Almighty, to bless his mother, and to prosper his own exertions for her happiness.

There is something most holy and beautiful in the attachment between mother and son: it is not always so tender or so enduring as the love between mother and daughter; but when circumstances arise to call forth the affections of a large-hearted, lonely boy toward his mother, there can be no feeling more intense or more devoted.

Again Richard’s habits of order increased his usefulness fourfold. He arranged all things in the neatest way, resolving to ask leave to dust the shelves, after the shop was shut; and determined to keep the windows clean; his mother’s window was the cleanest in the court, why should not his master’s be clean also?

He was finishing his morning’s work by mending an old stumpy pen—the last of three belonging to a leaden inkstand—when his master entered.

“So, you can mend pens?”

“Yes, sir, I think I can: would you be so good as to try this one?”

He good-naturedly did so, and, as it suited him, he was really pleased; and then told Richard where to find some things, and where to keep others, until it was time to carry out certain library books, and make sundry calls, to inquire after those that had not been returned.

Richard thought it no harm to peep into the books as he went along. The first novel he opened was all about great lords and ladies, and what they did and said, and how they looked and walked, and spent their time; and Richard, when he had read half a page, came to the conclusion that those grand folks must be different in every respect from any human beings he had ever seen. He had resolved to be very quick in his messages; but as he read, his pace insensibly slackened, and his master (a long, lean man, whose benevolent countenance was somewhat hardened by a firm set mouth) met him at the door.

“You have loitered.”

“I just looked into the book, sir; and I am afraid I did not come as fast as I intended.”

“I sent you to carry books, not to read them; and this sort of books would not do you any good, but rather harm.”

“Please, sir, I thought I had time enough.”

“Remember what Poor Richard says, ‘that what we call time enough always proves little enough.’ Besides, I have a right to your time; it is all you have to give in exchange for my money, and it is as dishonest to squander the one as it would be to squander the other.”

“I will never look in a book again, sir, without your leave.”

It was perhaps strange that, though the bookseller had seen as much of what is called “the world,”—that is, of his own particular “world,” with now and then a peep into its higher and lower regions—as most men, and been—as kind-natured men invariably are—frequently deceived, yet he never doubted the integrity of his little messenger’s promise, believing he would keep it to the letter; and he turned away without a single additional word of reproof or displeasure; but Richard heard sundry murmurings and grumblings on the stairs—ascending and descending—which convinced him that Matty would not be as easily pacified as her master. The bookseller told him he might go down and have his dinner.

“Your room would be more pleasing than your company,” said Matty. Without a word he was returning whence he came.

“Where are you going?” she inquired, vehemently.

“You did not wish me to stay.”

“But yer master did; he’s never contint but when he fills up this bit of a kitchen with tagrag and bobtail; but, no matter—there, eat your dinner.”

“Am I always to dine here?” he said, in a hesitating voice.

“Just like the rest of them! Yer going to find fault with the blessed food—I knew ye’ would—I said so to-day. Says I, ‘He was too fond of giving his bread to the dogs, to care for his dinner.’”

The woman’s contradictions perplexed the boy so much that he could not speak. Moreover, he felt a sort of self-reproach for eating all that meat, when his mother wanted; this made him more than once lay down his knife and fork, and look upward.

“Mighty fine eyes ye’ have, to be sure, and fond of showing them,” said the sarcastic Matty.

“I’m quite done, thank you,” he said, after murmuring a grace he truly felt.

“Come back: what’s to come of what ye’ choose to lave on yer plate? Do you mean that I don’t give Peter enough? He wouldn’t think it worth his while to ask for all you’d eat in a month. Why ye’ve left the best cut of the silver side!—the daintiness of some boys! I’ll go bail ye’ve eat yer own weight of pudding or hard-bake while ye’ were out; but as master said, ‘Give him his dinner,’ I’v no notion of yer not eating it; so, put it up in paper, and let me see the last of ye’ this blessed day.”

Richard thanked her so warmly, that she knew, with instinctive feeling, there was some one at home he loved better than himself. Her heart softened—or rather, her mood changed. But while she paused, Richard thought, and held the piece of meat on the paper she had given him, without folding it up.

“I’d rather not take it, thank you,” said the boy, gently. “I’d much rather not take it.”

“Poor and proud—poor and proud,” muttered Matty; “but ye’ shall take it. I’m not to be contradicted by the likes of you.”

“I will not take it,” he said, firmly. “Master ordered me my dinner, but did not say I was to take away any thing; and, as it is his—not yours—So, thank you—all—”

He dared not finish the sentence: Matty struck down the knuckles of both hands violently on the table, and advanced her strongly-marked face close to his: it was illumined by fierce anger, and her small, piercing, black eyes flashed fire.

“Do ye’ mean to tell me, ye’ waspeen, that I’m a thief?”

“No—no—no, indeed,” said Richard, backing out as fast as he could. Still the flaming face and flashing eyes followed him; but something arrested his progress—he could retreat no farther: it was the bookseller, who inquired what was the matter. Matty multiplied and exaggerated: the little “nagur” had as good as called her a thief. After many fruitless exertions to obtain silence, the master at last succeeded in hearing the truth from Richard.

“She gave me a beautiful dinner—a fine dinner, sir—too good—too much—and I could not eat it all; so she desired me to take up what I left, and carry it home. It was so kind of her; but I thought you would not approve of my taking it. It was no longer my dinner, when I had eaten all I could: it did not appear to me quite hers to give.”

“To doubt my right!” commented Matty; but Mr. Whitelock commanded her to listen, in a tone she was little accustomed to.

“The lad is right, Matty; it is the proper sense of justice and honesty. I am glad to see it, Matty; it is not common. You may take what you leave in future, my boy; Matty was right, and you were right. No words, Matty.”

And the master—who was really, like many peace-lovers, fearful of noise, and consequently gave way more frequently than he ought to do, merely to avoid it—seeing that he had, in this instance, the advantage, and being well pleased with himself, resolved to make a dignified exit, and withdrew, thinking—“An evidence of truth, and an evidence of honesty—both in one day—both in one day; very pleasing, very remarkable.”

Matty, however, had been offended, and she determined to show it. She paced up and down the kitchen, talking loudly to herself.

“I’m not the sort to squander my master’s property on comers or goers; I know what’s enough for a boy’s dinner; and, whether he eats it or not, there it is, and I have nothing to do with it after; for Peter scorns scraps. There—be off with ye’rself—there’s nothing keeping ye’ that I know of now, ye’ got yer answer. Setting up for honesty, indeed! as if there was no one ever honest before ye’.”

The boy’s eyes filled with tears.

“I do not know,” he said, “why every one should be so kind to me.”

“You young villain!” exclaimed Matty, with a flourish of a brobdignag poker, which seemed forged by the Cyclops. “Get out of my kitchen this moment! What do ye’ mean by saying I’m kind—kind enagh! A mighty fine thing ye’ are to take away my character! Botheration! is that what I’m come to?”

Richard flew up the stairs, concluded his evening’s shop-work to his master’s satisfaction, again went out to distribute and gather books, and religiously kept his promise; never paused before a print-shop, nor under a tempting lamp-post, to read a sentence; thought it would not become him to be proud, so nodded to Ned Brady, at his old corner. Ned hopped after him, first on one leg, then on the other, and after a brilliant somerset stood right in his path.

“Come and watch for a job,” he exclaimed.

“I don’t want it, thank you; I’ve a place.”

“A place! Britons never should be slaves! I like odd jobs, and freedom! Lend us a bob?”

“I have not got it.”

“Well, then, a brownie.”

“I have not even that,” replied Richard.

Ned eyed him closely.

“To think of your turning out like that,” he said, and he then walked round and round him. “We did not think we had such a fine gentleman for a friend, when we said he’d got the lucky penny.”

“We were never friends,” observed Richard, coldly.

“Don’t be too up,” was the reply, “and cut a poor cove because his toggery is not as fine as your’n. Rather small, though, aint they? Would just fit me.” He made two or three mocking bows round Richard, and vanished, playing the cart-wheel—turning over and over—along the street.

“He carried many a heavy load for me, though, when I was in my former hard place, and it’s a pity he is such a bad boy in some things,” thought Richard, as he trudged on. He left the books, offering to do any thing else he could, at his master’s, and felt all the anticipations of “home” more delightfully than ever, when he saw the candle-light glimmering through the chinks of his mother’s shutter. The tiny room seemed to him a paradise. The widow had finished her embroidery and was netting, so her eyes did not look as strained and weary as usual. There was something simmering and smelling very savory on the fire; but Richard put back his hand to pull out his piece of beef. It was gone!

Richard had no doubt that his quandam “friend” had picked his pocket, more in fun than malice; and he was confirmed in the idea, by seeing a boy’s shadow on the wall of the opposite houses—Ned, doubtless, waiting to see how he bore his disappointment. His first impulse was to run out and thrash the thief; but the memory of their nodding companionship, and of the loads the unfortunate lad had carried for him twice or thrice—running off with what Richard had staggered under—harmonized by the perfume of the pot au feu, taught him forbearance, and the evening passed, as the widow said, “full of hope.” Many such succeeded. Richard well satisfied his master, although he was a reserved, peculiar man, not much known, and less liked; he frequented no public places, and kept little society, spending his evenings in making up his accounts, arranging his books, and reading. Matty had often told her confidential friend, the milk-woman, that “one might as well live in the house with a corpse,” adding her belief “that all would be corpses one day, for certain; and the sooner she was one the pleasanter it would be for herself, only that, being a lone woman, she thought while people had the holy breath of life in their bodies they might as well be alive—that was all.”

Richard had numbered more than fourteen years when he entered Mr. Whitelock’s service. He managed to keep on speaking terms with Matty, for when she would not talk to him she talked at him. He frequently remained half an hour after all was shut up to read to her; and once when Mr. Whitelock called to her to inquire who was below, she answered, in a tone of fierce indignation, that it was only the “State of Europe, the French at another revulsion, and Spain on the top of the Pyramids.”

Richard’s life passed very happily: he was gaining knowledge, he was assisting his beloved mother, he was inhaling the atmosphere of all others he most enjoyed. He had permission to take home any book at night, provided he brought it in the morning; at first, he greedily devoured all that came in his way, but the reading-stock of a third class library was not likely to feed a mind eager for actual knowledge, and largely comprehensive. Poetry he imbibed fervently; but whenever he could get biography or scientific books, he dispensed with the luxury of sleep, and came with pale cheeks and haggard eyes to his employment in the morning. Sandford and Merton, with its bright lessons of practical independence, was his favorite relaxation, and frequently, as he told his mother, “he took a plunge” into Franklin’s life as a refreshment. Then he wrote copies upon stray slips of paper; worked sums and problems on a rough piece of common slate; read what he most admired to his mother, though he was often grieved that her enthusiasm did not keep pace with his, and that she had little relish for any thing that “had not hope in it.” Then she would insist on his going to rest, when he was all eagerness to finish a book or unravel a mystery—not the transparent mystery of a novel, but the mystery of some mighty worker in the business of life; some giant amongst men, who achieved greatness though born in obscurity; some artist, whose fame towered toward the heavens, like the tree produced by the grain of mustard-seed; some Lancaster, or Washington, or Howard, or Watt, or humble, benevolent Wilderspin, revolutionizing sloth into activity, touching the eyes of multitudes with a magic wand, so that they cried out as one man. Behold, we see!—electrifying nations, calling into existence the dormant powers and sympathies of nature and of art.

Often his eyes refused to slumber or sleep, when, in obedience to the gentle request which love turned into a command, he lay down, beneath the shadow of his mother’s blessing; and his brain would throb, and his heart beat; and when she slept, he would creep from his humble pallet and read by the light of the one lamp which illumined the court, and was (so he thought) fortunately placed opposite their window. Not that the boy understood all he read, but he imbibed its influence, and clasping his large brow within his palms, he would weigh and consider, and feel, within that narrow room, where poverty still lingered—though then, with their simple and few wants, rather as a shadow than a substance—and his heart throbbing as he thought, “What shall I do to be great?” even, it might have been, when the chastened and subdued spirit of his young but almost sightless mother murmured in her half-broken sleep, “What shall I do to be saved?” And then, as the spring advanced, and night and morning blended sweetly together, he hastened to his work joyfully—for he loved the labor that gave him food and knowledge. Matty would say his “food went into an ill skin—never did credit to man or mortial;” while his silent master, absorbed in his occupations, and pretty much abstracted from the every-day goings-on of his establishment—having, as he said of himself, an honest curse of a housekeeper and a jewel of a boy—was, nevertheless, sometimes startled by the singular questions Richard asked, meekly and modestly seeking for information, from him whom his enthusiastic nature believed one of the mild lights of literature.

What will youths who are pampered or wooed into learning say of the circulating boy of a circulating library, performing the menial offices of his station, yet working his mind ardently and steadily onward?

One evening, after he had gone out with his books, his mother entered the shop, timidly and with hesitating step, which those who struggle against blindness unconsciously assume. Matty was there, removing some papers; Peter, the most silent of all dogs, lay upon the mat, and Mrs. Dolland stumbled over him: Peter only gave vent to a stifled remonstrance, but that was enough to set Matty into a passion.

“Couldn’t you see the dog!” she exclaimed. “If you war a customer tin times over, you had no call to the baste; he’s neither pens, ink, wafers, books, nor blotting-paper—no, nor the writer of a book—to be trampled under your feet.”

“I did not see him,” she said meekly.

“Can’t you use your eyes?”

The unconscious roughness cut like a razor.

“I did,” she replied, turning her large, sorrowful, and dimmed eyeballs toward Matty—“I did; I used them night and day, until it was the will of God to take away their light.”

“God look down upon you!” exclaimed the woman tenderly. “Sure it isn’t going blind you are—a young woman like you to go blind?”

“I wanted to see Mr. Whitelock,” she said, without heeding Matty’s observation. “I wanted to speak a few words to him.”

Matty loved a gossip. She never suspected the fair, frail, trembling woman, “going blind,” to be Richard’s mother. He never mentioned his mother’s blindness; he could not speak of it; he hoped it would never be worse than it was. She could still read; and do plain work; and so Matty heard not of it. She had nothing particular to do that evening, and the sight of a stranger did her good, because she expected a gossip.

“Master can’t always be interrupted,” she replied, “particularly by them he doesn’t know; but if you will tell me your name and business, I’ll see what can be done for you.”

“I am Richard’s mother.”

“Think of that now. We do our best with him, poor boy—but he’s an unruly member!”

“Richard!” exclaimed the poor woman, in a tone of dismay.

“Ay, indeed; that is, he’s not so jist at the prisent time, but he’ll become so, like all the rest of them boys, one of these days.”

“God forbid!” ejaculated the widow.

“Amin!” said Matty; “but he’ll be sure to come to it at last.”

“Come to what?” inquired the alarmed mother.

“To all sorts and kinds of contrariness,” replied Matty, rapidly; “boys can’t help it, you see; it’s their nature; they’re not patient, bidable, gentle creatures like us—not they! Mischief, and all kinds of murther, and upsetting, and latch-keys, and fidgets, and police-courts, and going out at nights, and staying out all day (though that’s a good riddance) and boxing, and apple-stealing, falling in love, and kicking up shindies.”

“I beg your pardon, but I do not understand you,” interrupted Mrs. Dolland, with more determination than she had exercised for years. She felt as if this strange, abrupt, half-mad woman was stringing together a set of accusations against her child.

“I’m obleeged to you, ma’am, for the compliment,” said Matty, dropping a curtsey; “but, as that’s neither here nor there, what’s your business with the masther?”

“That I can only tell himself,” she replied.

“Well,” muttered Matty, “that beats—! But the women now have no modesty. Them English is all a silent set—no sociability in them. Tell himself!—as if it wasn’t more natural for a half-blind craythur like that to discoorse a woman than a man. Well, well! No wonder my hair’s gone gray and my heart hard!”

There was something almost courtly in Mr. Whitelock’s manner of addressing women. People in his own class of life, who observed it, thought it ridiculous, and never speculated as to how this politeness became engrafted on his nature. He placed a seat for Mrs. Dolland in his little parlor; and, though it was a warm autumn evening, he moved it to keep her out of the air that blew over a box of yellowish, stunted mignonette, and two sickly wall-flowers, which graced the sill of his back window; he also pushed his own chair as far as he could from the widow’s, but, like all persons with impaired vision, she moved nearer to him, and turned her restless eyes toward the door.

“It is shut close,” said the bookseller.

[To be continued.

———

BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH.

———

A TALE OF CHIVALRY.

(Continued from page 330.)