she regularly used to look in at my door, with a chirping,
confident air, and the question, "Any more songs to-day?" as though it
were some necessary article of daily consumption. I never took any more
of her songs, although that circumstance did not shake her faith in my
literary taste; my abstinence from this exciting mental pabulum being
probably ascribed to charitable motives. She was finally absorbed by the
S. F. B. A., who have probably made a proper disposition of her effects.
She was a little old woman, of Celtic origin, predisposed to melancholy,
and looking as if she had read most of her ballads.

My next reminiscence takes the shape of a very seedy individual, who
had, for three or four years, been vainly attempting to get back to
his relatives in Illinois, where sympathizing friends and a comfortable
almshouse awaited him. Only a few dollars, he informed me,--the
uncontributed remainder of the amount necessary to purchase a steerage
ticket,--stood in his way. These last few dollars seem to have been
most difficult to get, and he had wandered about, a sort of antithetical
Flying Dutchman, forever putting to sea, yet never getting away from
shore. He was a "49-er," and had recently been blown up in a tunnel, or
had fallen down a shaft, I forget which. This sad accident obliged him
to use large quantities of whiskey as a liniment, which, he informed
me, occasioned the mild fragrance which his garments exhaled. Though
belonging to the same class, he was not to be confounded with the
unfortunate miner who could not get back to his claim without pecuniary
assistance, or the desolate Italian, who hopelessly handed you
a document in a foreign language, very much bethumbed and
illegible,--which, in your ignorance of the tongue, you couldn't help
suspiciously feeling might have been a price current, but which you
could see was proffered as an excuse for alms. Indeed, whenever any
stranger handed me, without speaking, an open document, which bore the
marks of having been carried in the greasy lining of a hat, I always
felt safe in giving him a quarter and dismissing him without further
questioning. I always noticed that these circular letters, when written
in the vernacular, were remarkable for their beautiful caligraphy and
grammatical inaccuracy, and that they all seem to have been written by
the same hand. Perhaps indigence exercises a peculiar and equal effect
upon the handwriting.

I recall a few occasional mend