to enter into
conversation with him, but retired with the impression that he was
indifferent to ladies' society. Paid his bill the other day without
saying a word about it. Paid it in gold,--had a great heap of
twenty-dollar pieces. Hires her best room. Thinks he is a very nice
little man, but lives dreadful lonely up in his chamber. Wants the care
of some capable nuss. Never pitied anybody more in her life--never see a
more interestin' person.

--My intention was, when I began making these notes, to let them consist
principally of conversations between myself and the other boarders. So
they will, very probably; but my curiosity is excited about this little
boarder of ours, and my reader must not be disappointed, if I sometimes
interrupt a discussion to give an account of whatever fact or traits I
may discover about him. It so happens that his room is next to mine, and
I have the opportunity of observing many of his ways without any active
movements of curiosity. That his room contains heavy furniture, that
he is a restless little body and is apt to be up late, that he talks
to himself, and keeps mainly to himself, is nearly all I have yet found
out.

One curious circumstance happened lately which I mention without drawing
an absolute inference. Being at the studio of a sculptor with whom I am
acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of a left arm. On my
asking where the model came from, he said it was taken direct from the
arm of a deformed person, who had employed one of the Italian moulders
to make the cast. It was a curious case, it should seem, of one
beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly imperfect--I have
repeatedly noticed this little gentleman's use of his left arm. Can he
have furnished the model I saw at the sculptor's?

--So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be
something pretty and pleasing about her. A woman with a creamy
voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the
boarding-house,--a little more marrow and a little less sinew than our
landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of whom are
of the turkey-drumstick style of organization. I don't mean that these
are our only female companions; but the rest being conversational
non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in their food as
locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither away from the table
like blossoms that never came to fruit, I have not yet referred