dockermunts?--added the Member of the Haouse.

The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was
no hope in that direction. Dr. Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of
youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the
second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the
remaining digits diverging from each other, in the plane of the median
line of the face,--I suppose this is the way he would have described
the gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin. That Boy
immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending
the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and
vigorously agitating those of the two hands,--a gesture which acts like
a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed,
and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the
words uttered by the Salesman. It must have been noticed that he
very rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep
emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is
the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet,
like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not
unworthy of being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical
briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly
belongs to his calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a
succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate
spasms; as thus:

"Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards."

Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen
somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry
over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms;
out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up,
brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again,
like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man's having
some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need
not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out
of him.

But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow
that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner
life. I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly
commonplace and unemotional