don't know,
Sir,--but I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and
when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted
mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the
greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little
Boston!

--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,
especially when it finished with the last two words.

And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which
always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the
great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the
part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is
to take in that consummation of human development to which he looks
forward.

Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the
anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.

You are not well,--she said.

I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the
death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it
had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out
of sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, "The
death-symbol is still there!"

A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,
--reads books, old and new,--has many recent publications sent him, they
tell me, but, what is more curious, keeps up with the everyday affairs
of the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with
preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him
in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of
the noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements
I mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,--I
observe that it is rarely laughing of late;--I never have detected one
articulate word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human
voice.

There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on
the part of the boarders generally so far as he is concerned. This is
doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his
look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some
hidden disease is at work upon him.

--What 's the matter with Little Boston?--said the young man John to me
one day.--There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks
peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in