oose
enough to show his decayed home-grown fruit to you, when he invites you
to sup with him in that frescoed dining-room? He picks out the
rosy-cheeks for your entertainment; and the sour grapes, the spotted
pomes, the mildewed berries are tucked away up-stairs. Now you are not
invited into that store-room. You are, in fact, jealously kept out of
it. Let us creep round the corner and look up at that window, now the
company is all gone. You see a light there, don't you? Do you know what
is burning? Is it gas, or oil, or kerosene, or spermaceti, or wax, or
tallow? You will never know, Mrs. G.; for Jones trims that light
himself. Bridget never saw it yet. Strange, isn't it, that Jones, a rich
man, with plenty of servants, should humble himself to such a menial
occupation? My own impression is, that he uses a candle in that room,
and has paid so high a price for it that he doesn't dare to trust any
one else with it.

There are many such lighted windows; and who knows the game that is
going on behind the curtain? _Va-lent-ils la chandelle?_ When Pinxit
looks around on the accumulating canvases gathering dust in his
unfrequented studio, and thinks of the dreams which gave fairy tints to
his palette, that none else could perceive,--when he feels that his
genius is unacknowledged, and his toil in vain,--when he sees Dorb's
crudities in every window, and Dorb's praises in the "Art-Journals,"
while Pinxit is starving unknown,--doesn't he take down the old saw from
his easel, and try its edge over his proud, swelling heart? When
Scripsit, who has dipped his pen in his soul to inscribe those glowing
lines which were to bear him up and set him across the golden spire of
the pinnacle of Fame, and whose fine frenzy has as yet given him but a
scurvy mundane support, when Scripsit brings home his modest rasher, and
finds, on unfolding it, that it is wrapped in the unsold sheets of his
last lyric,--doesn't he think that the tallow which helped him to pen
the thoughts in the midnight watches was the costliest of _feu sacre_?
When Senator Patriota sits brooding over the speech which has carried
the opposition against him, and sees his honorable friend slipping into
the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth,
consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb _valoir_
negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night
behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in