y.

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish
habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of my
companion's character, if it have a better part, is that which usually
comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognize
the man. As most of these old Custom-House officers had good traits,
and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and
protective, was favorable to the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon
grew to like them all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons,--when
the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,
merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid systems,--it
was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them
all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of
past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from
their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common
with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense
of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam
that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect
alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case,
however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent
all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place,
my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in
their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether
superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their
evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were
sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good
repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there
will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from
their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all
the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many
opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their
memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction
of their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow's
dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the
world's wonde