d as if he never dined.

"A little ode, rather queer, too," was the reply, "of the same sort you
see strewn on the floor here."

"I did not observe them. Let me see;" picking one up and looking it
over. "Well now, this is pretty; plaintive, especially the opening:--

'Alas for man, he hath small sense
Of genial trust and confidence.'

--If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir.
Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?"

"As to that," said the little dried-up man, "I think it a kind of queer
thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set
me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were
trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I
am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works
on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying
dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in
well-doing."

"Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who
snowed the odes about here?"

"I cannot say; I have not been here long."

"Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as
the rest, and have cards."

"Thank you, I never play cards."

"A bottle of wine?"

"Thank you, I never drink wine."

"Cigars?"

"Thank you, I never smoke cigars."

"Tell stories?"

"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling."

"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as
water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial
hand at the cards. To begin, we will play for as small a sum as you
please; just enough to make it interesting."

"Indeed, you must excuse me. Somehow I distrust cards."

"What, distrust cards? Genial cards? Then for once I join with our sad
Philomel here:--

'Alas for man, he hath small sense
Of genial trust and confidence.'

Good-bye!"

Sauntering and chatting here and there, again, he with the book at
length seems fatigued, looks round for a seat, and spying a
partly-vacant settee drawn up against the side, drops down there; soon,
like his chance neighbor, who happens to be the good merchant, becoming
not a little interested in the scene more immediately before him; a
party at whist; two cream-faced, giddy, unpolished youths, the one in a
red cravat, the other in a green, opposed to two bland, grave, handsome,
self-possessed men