birthday; he had always been accustomed to invite his clerks on similar
anniversaries, and could not well pass me over; I was, however, kept
strictly in the background. Mrs. Crimsworth, elegantly dressed in satin
and lace, blooming in youth and health, vouchsafed me no more notice
than was expressed by a distant move; Crimsworth, of course, never
spoke to me; I was introduced to none of the band of young ladies, who,
enveloped in silvery clouds of white gauze and muslin, sat in array
against me on the opposite side of a long and large room; in fact, I was
fairly isolated, and could but contemplate the shining ones from affar,
and when weary of such a dazzling scene, turn for a change to the
consideration of the carpet pattern. Mr. Crimsworth, standing on the
rug, his elbow supported by the marble mantelpiece, and about him
a group of very pretty girls, with whom he conversed gaily--Mr.
Crimsworth, thus placed, glanced at me; I looked weary, solitary, kept
down like some desolate tutor or governess; he was satisfied.

Dancing began; I should have liked well enough to be introduced to some
pleasing and intelligent girl, and to have freedom and opportunity
to show that I could both feel and communicate the pleasure of social
intercourse--that I was not, in short, a block, or a piece of furniture,
but an acting, thinking, sentient man. Many smiling faces and graceful
figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the
figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized,
left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No
fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked
for and found my mother's picture. I took a wax taper from a stand,
and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image.
My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and
countenance--her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular beauty
pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined
likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with complacency
the lineaments of their daughters' faces, where frequently their own
similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and
delicacy of outline. I was just wondering how that picture, to me so
interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close
behind me pronounced the words--

"Humph! there's some sense in that face."

I turned; at my elb