ensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to
bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.
Well! well! I'll make a scarecrow of him after all. 'Tis an innocent
and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and, if each of his
human brethren had as fit a one, 't would be the better for mankind;
and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he."

So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon!" cried
she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for my pipe!"

EGOTISM;[1] OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT

[From the Unpublished "Allegories of the Heart."]

[1] The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a moral
signification, has been known to occur in more than one instance.

"Here he comes!" shouted the boys along the street. "Here comes the man
with a snake in his bosom!"

This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears as he was about to enter the iron
gate of the Elliston mansion, made him pause. It was not without a
shudder that he found himself on the point of meeting his former
acquaintance, whom he had known in the glory of youth, and whom now
after an interval of five years, he was to find the victim either of a
diseased fancy or a horrible physical misfortune.

"A snake in his bosom!" repeated the young sculptor to himself. "It
must be he. No second man on earth has such a bosom friend. And now, my
poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my errand aright!
Woman's faith must be strong indeed since thine has not yet failed."

Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the gate and waited
until the personage so singularly announced should make his appearance.
After an instant or two he beheld the figure of a lean man, of
unwholesome look, with glittering eyes and long black hair, who seemed
to imitate the motion of a snake; for, instead of walking straight
forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a curved
line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral
or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought
by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky
nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward
guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish
tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out
of which he had once wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky locks.

The wretched being approach