n
old-fashioned houses, and which, from its incapacity to hold more than
one, secured to the worthy recluse the privacy he longed for; and here,
among superannuated hearth-brushes, an old hand screen, an asthmatic
bellows, and a kettle-holder, sat the timid youth, "alone, but in a
crowd." Not all the seductions of loo, limited to three pence, nor even
that most appropriately designated game, beggar-my-neighbour--could
withdraw him from his blest retreat. Like his countryman, St. Kevin--my
friend Petrie has ascertained that the saint was a native of Tralee--he
fled from the temptations of the world, and the blandishments of the
fair; but, alas! like the saint himself, the

"poor jib little knew
All that wily sex can do;"

For while he hugged himself in the security of his fortress, the web of
his destiny was weaving. So true is it, as he himself used, no less
pathetically than poetically to express it, "misfortune will find you
out, if ye were hid in a tay chest."

It happened that in Mrs. Clanfrizzle's establishment, the "enfant bleu,"
already mentioned, was the only individual of his sex retained; and
without for a moment disparaging the ability or attentions of this gifted
person, yet it may reasonably be credited, that in waiting on a party of
twenty-five or thirty persons at dinner, all of whom he had admitted as
porter, and announced as maitre d'hotel, with the subsequent detail of
his duties in the drawing-room, that Peter, blue Peter--his
boarding-house soubriquet--not enjoying the bird-like privilege of
"being in two places at once," gave one rather the impression of a
person of hasty and fidgetty habits--for which nervous tendency the
treatment he underwent was certainly injudicious--it being the
invariable custom for each guest to put his services in requisition,
perfectly irrespective of all other claims upon him, from whatsoever
quarter coming--and then, at the precise moment that the luckless valet
was snuffing the candles, he was abused by one for not bringing coal; by
another for having carried off his tea-cup, sent on an expedition for
sugar; by a third for having left the door open, which he had never been
near; and so on to the end of the chapter.

It chanced that a few evenings previous to my appearance at the house,
this indefatigable Caleb was ministering as usual to the various and
discrepant wants of the large party assembled in the drawing-r