a bad way, 'n' wants a
puss to take care of him. Them pusses that take care of old rich folks
marry 'em sometimes,--'n' they don't commonly live a great while after
that. No, Sir! I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken so
much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body
of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's
goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know?
Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and
be (this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have him dyin'.
Not by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear
him blow off his steam?

I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the
Little Gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a
better world.

--In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young
lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found
myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss
Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps
belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the
true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction
from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the
feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas
or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp,
well-defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have
a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in
physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find
few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not
confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these
young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a
jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,--an ugly height to get up,
and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen.
Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,--and
crows generally know about how far boys can "shin up," and set their
household establishments above that high-water mark. Still another of
these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on
the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island.
She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of h