isguised himself for the purpose
of putting his clerk's long-tried fidelity to a final test, and, that
sustained triumphantly, had rewarded him in the manner we have seen.
He told how, disgusted in early life by the treachery and ingratitude
of friends and relations who had combined to ruin him, he had become a
misanthrope and miser; how the spectacle of Simon's disinterested
fidelity, rigid sense of honor, self-denial and cheerfulness, had won
back his better nature; and he wound off, as he shook Quillpen warmly
by the hand, by announcing that he had raised his salary to twelve
hundred dollars per annum.

The good news almost killed Simon. "Please your honor," said he,
endeavoring to frame an appropriate reply,--"no--that ain't it--please
your excellency--you've gone and done it--you've gone and done it! I
was Baron Rothschild before, and now--no--I can't tell what I am--it
isn't in no biographical dictionary, and I don't believe it's in the
'Wealth of Nations!'"

"Well, never mind," said Latitat, laughing, "go home and tell Mrs. Q.
the office won't be open till to-morrow, and that I shall depend on
dining with you all to-day."

THE OBLIGING YOUNG MAN.

"Cars ready for Boston and way stations!" shouted the conductor of a
railroad train, as the steamhorse, harnessed for his twenty mile trip,
stood chafing, snorting, and coughing, throwing up angry puffs of
mingled gray and dingy vapor from his sturdy lungs. "Cars ready for
Boston and way stations!"

"O, yes!" replied a brisk young man, with a bright eye, peculiar
smirk, spotted neckcloth, and gray gaiters with pearl buttons. "Cars
ready for Boston and way stations. All aboard. Now's your time--quick,
or you'll lose 'em. Now then, ma'am."

"But, sir," remonstrated the old lady he addressed, and whom he was
urging at the steps of a first class car.

"O, never mind!" replied the brisk young man. "Know what you're going
to say--too much trouble--none whatever, I assure you. Perfect
stranger, true--but scriptural injunction, do as you'd be done by. In
with you--ding! ding!--there's the bell--off we go."

And so in fact they did go off at forty miles an hour.

"But, sir," said the old lady, trembling violently.

"I see," interrupted the OBLIGING YOUNG MAN; "want a
seat--here it is--a great bargain--cars full--quick, or you'll lose
it."

"But, sir," said the old lady, with nervous trepidation, "I--I--wasn't
going to Boston."

"The deuce you weren't. We