ing, Ma'am! I've just picked it up. Can't stop to find the
owner. Worth a dollar, Ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents"--

"Boy!"

I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew one long breath, but
whether he thought I was going to kill him,--I dare say I looked it,--or
whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gallows before, I know
not; but without waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed from
the car as precipitately as he had rushed in. I _was_ angry,--not
because I was to have been cheated, for I have been repeatedly and
atrociously cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared
attempt on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I
_look_ like a rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of
never having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of eye-teeth
in my demeanor? Oh, Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous bosom you are
nourishing a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto you, if you do
not strangle him before he develops into mature anacondaism! In point of
natural history I am not sure that vipers do grow up anacondas, but
for the purposes of moral philosophy the development theory answers
perfectly well.

In Boston a dreadful thing happened to me,--a thing too horrible to
relate. I have no reason to suppose that the outrage was intentional;
but if I were absolute monarch of all I survey, there is one house in
one street in Boston which I would have razed to the ground; and tobacco
I would banish forever from the haunts of civilization.

In Boston we had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage,--that is,
my trunk--to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I had
a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit for the journey,--a very
little shopping,--only a nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is
a matter of small moment, but in my case the subject had swollen
into unnatural dimensions. Nightcaps are not generally considered
healthy,--at least not by physicians. Nature has given to the head its
sufficient and appropriate covering, the hair. Anything more than this
injures the head, by confining the heat, preventing the soothing,
cooling contact of air, and so deranging the circulation of the blood.
Therefore I have always heeded the dictates of Nature, which I have
supposed to be to brush out the hair thoroughly at night and let it fly.
But there are serious disadvantages connected with this course. For
Nature will be sure t