was young
once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos. We shall find
that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is in love, or will
be in love before we have done with him, for aught that I know!

Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the
seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where
you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving
sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions?
You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor,
and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and
dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once
been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and
self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that long yellow
pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a wild creature,
which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him,
quiet as you think him. A heart which has been domesticated by matrimony
and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bullfinch; but a wild heart which
has never been fairly broken in flutters fiercely long after you think
time has tamed it down,--like that purple finch I had the other day,
which could not be approached without such palpitations and frantic
flings against the bars of his cage, that I had to send him back and get
a little orthodox canary which had learned to be quiet and never mind the
wires or his keeper's handling. I will tell you my wicked, but half
involuntary experiment on the wild heart under the faded bombazine.

Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special
weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch
the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this
thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it.
If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him,
limping.

I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke of
Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which I use
rarely in my common talk.

I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate
depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct,
which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian
anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not
answerable. It is, I am c