k in the corner, imported from England before the celebrated
Revolutionary war, impresses the cat as a very formidable object with
its stately stride-stride-stride--so that the cat regarding it a moment,
forgets the canary bird, and mews for a small portion of cream in a
saucer.

"Halloo! halloo!" says the parrot, awakened by a leap of the fire; for,
the back-log has broken in half, and Pisgah sees, by the increased
light, the very hair-powder gleam on the portrait of General Washington.
But now the cloth is removed, and the old-fashioned table folds up its
leaves; they sip some remarkable sherry, which grandfather regards with
a wheezy sort of laugh, and after they have played one game of draughts,
Mr. Pisgah looks at his gold chronometer, and asks if he has still the
great room above the porch and plenty of bedclothes.

This is what Mr. Pisgah sees upon the film of his tears--wealth,
happiness, manliness! When he dashes the tears themselves to the
pavement with an oath, what rises upon his eye and his heart?
Paris--grand, luxurious, pitiless, and he, at twilight, flung upon the
world, with neither kindred nor country--a thing unwilling to live,
unfit to die!

He strolled along the quay to the Morgue; the beautiful water of St.
Michel fell sibilantly cold from the fountain, and Apollyon above, at
the feet of the avenging angel, seemed a sermon and an allegory of his
own prostration. How all the folks upon the bridge were stony faced! It
had never before occurred to him that men were cold-blooded creatures.
He wondered if the Seine, dashing against the quays and piers beneath,
were not their proper element? Ay! for here were three drowned people on
the icy slabs of the Morgue, with half a hundred gazing wistfully at
them, and their fixed eyes glaring fishily at the skylight, as if it
were the surface of the river and they were at rest below.

So seemed all the landscape as he kept down the quay--the lines of high
houses were ridges only in the sea, and Notre Dame, lifting its towers
and sculptured facade before, was merely a high-decked ship, with
sailors crowding astern. The holy apostles above the portal were more
like human men than ever, with their silicious eyes and pulseless
bosoms; while the hideous gargoyles at the base of each crocheted
pinnacle, seemed swimming in the dusky evening.

It may have been that this aqueous phenomenon was natural to one
"half-seas over;" but not till he stood on the place of th