is own peculiarities, the persistent rhymer went about
pleased with himself and all the world. Now he was particularly happy,
for he considered himself a kind of presiding officer at the poorhouse,
and as such the proper person to show the premises to curious strangers,
or to formally install new inmates. On the entrance of Johanson with the
pastor's permit, the poet immediately took the odd-looking pauper in
hand, to make him at home in the establishment.

He knocked at the small room opposite the main entrance, and a shrill
voice having shouted, "Come in!" the visitors opened the door.

"I bring a new-comer,
Our guest for the summer!
He's Johanson, he;
Gull Hansdotter, she."

So presented, Johanson bowed to the little old woman, who stood up
beside the chair in which she had been sitting, and deigned to bend her
knees for a courtesy just sufficiently to bring her short skirts
possibly one inch nearer the floor. Her stiff demeanour, however,
changed suddenly as she darted to a corner and produced a bit of rag
carpet, on which she requested the visitors to stand, as her room had
been freshly scoured for Sunday.

"Scour Sunday,
Scour Monday,
Scour every day,
That's her way,"

said the poet, retiring precipitately with his companion. The poet had
described the absorbing pursuit of his fellow-lodger. Chairs, table, and
floor in that little room were subject to such rasping purifications,
that if there had ever been paint on any of them, it was a thing of the
far past, while an ashy whiteness and a general smell of dampness were
the abiding peculiarities of the apartment. The eyes of the owner had
become possessed of a microscopic power of discovering the minutest
speck that might have been envied by any scientific observer of insect
life.

The poet next threw open the door of the room opposite his own, as he
said to his companion,--

"Here is your place--
No want of space;
According to diet,
Not always so quiet."

These were the quarters Johanson was to share with the broad-chested man
in a big chair, who sat with a stout stick beside him, as if ready at
any moment to meet the attack of a roving marauder.

"This is our cellar-master,
Who lived faster and faster,
Till here with us he had to be.--
It's Johanson who comes with me;
He'll share your room, at least to-night,
And longer if you treat him right."

There was only an inhospit