ke, except to recommend an
especially desirable wine to a favored guest. When he did speak,
however, his profanity was phenomenal. Every second word was an oath.
To those who were not shocked by it there was nothing more droll and
incongruous than to hear this quiet, reserved, well-dressed,
gentleman-like person pouring out, on the rare occasions when he talked
freely, in a deep, measured, monotonous tone, a flood of imprecations
which would have made a pirate hang his head. He had been, as a boy,
clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat, and a vacancy occurring in the
office of mate, he had been promoted to that place. His youthful face
and quiet speech did not sufficiently impose upon the rough deck-hands
of that early day. They had been accustomed to harsher modes of address,
and he saw his authority defied and in danger. So he set himself
seriously to work to learn to swear; and though at first it made his
heart shiver a little with horror and his cheek burn with shame, he
persevered, as a matter of business, until his execrations amazed the
roustabouts. When he had made a fortune, owned a line of steamboats, and
finally retired from the river, the habit had been fastened upon him,
and oaths became to him the only form of emphatic speech. The hardest
work he ever did in his life was, while courting his wife, a Miss Flora
Ballston, of Cincinnati, to keep from mingling his ordinary forms of
emphasis in his asseverations of affection. But after he was married,
and thrown more and more into the company of women, that additional
sense, so remarkable in men of his mould, came to him, and he never
lapsed, in their presence, into his natural way of speech. Perhaps this
was the easier, as he rarely spoke at all when they were by--not that
he was in the least shy or timid, but because they, as a rule, knew
nothing about stocks, or pig-iron, or wine, or trotting horses,--the
only subjects, in his opinion, which could interest any reasonable
creature.

When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled
with guests. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with
their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from
her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless
hospitality.

"Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to
see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were
afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-