se had taken the word as the
Scotch, not for English youth, but for male humanity,--wide enough to
include a sober under-clerk of doubtful age. Jamie's father had been
a drayman, in the employ of the house, as we have said, until his
middle was bisected by that three-inch tire weighted with six
puncheons of Jamaica rum.

Jamie had been brought over from Scotland when veritably young,--some
months or so; had then been finished in the new-fangled American free
schools, and had come up in the counting-room, the day of the
accident, equipped to feed his broken-backed father, with knowledge
enough to be a bookkeeper, and little enough pride to be a messenger.
Only, he had no spirit of adventure to fit him for a supercargo,--even
that brushed too close upon the protagonist for him; and so he stayed
upon his office stool. While other clerks went away promoted, he
ticked off his life in alternation from the counting-room to the bank;
trustworthy on that well-taught street with any forms of other
people's fortunes, only not to make his own, and even trustworthy, as
we have seen it go unquestioned, with this little Spanish girl.

Jamie took her home to his parents, and for his sake they fell down
and worshiped; with them she lived. The father had had too much rum
upon him to care much for the things remaining in this life; after
such excessive external application, who could blame him for using it
internally more than most? The mother's marital affection, naturally,
was moderated by long practice of mixing him hot tumblers with two
lumps of sugar, and of seeing the thing administered more dear to her
spouse than the ministering angel. But the mother worshiped Jamie, and
Jamie worshiped the little girl; and the years went by.

It was pretty to see Jamie and his mother and the little girl walking
to church of a Sunday, and funny to hear Jamie's excuses for it
afterward.

"'Tis the women bodies need it," said he to Mr. James Bowdoin, who
rallied him thereupon.

"But surely, Jamie," said Mr. James, "you, who have read Hume until
you've half convinced us all to be free-thinkers,--you'd have your
daughter as well educated as yourself?"

"Hersel'," said Jamie, meaning _himself_,--"hersel' may go to ta
deevil if he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch
always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he
regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that
Mercedes must have, though h