ious than ever. So, between my
fancies and anticipations, I had but a poor night of it, and came down
tired to the breakfast-table. My visit was not to be made until after
this morning hour; there was nothing urgent, so the servant was ordered
to tell me.

It was the first breakfast at which the high chair at the side of Iris
had been unoccupied.--You might jest as well take away that chair,--said
our landlady,--he'll never want it again. He acts like a man that 's
struck with death, 'n' I don't believe he 'll ever come out of his
chamber till he 's laid out and brought down a corpse.--These good women
do put things so plainly! There were two or three words in her short
remark that always sober people, and suggest silence or brief moral
reflections.

--Life is dreadful uncerting,--said the Poor Relation,--and pulled in her
social tentacles to concentrate her thoughts on this fact of human
history.

--If there was anything a fellah could do,--said the young man John, so
called,--a fellah 'd like the chance o' helpin' a little cripple like
that. He looks as if he couldn't turn over any handier than a turtle
that's laid on his back; and I guess there a'n't many people that know
how to lift better than I do. Ask him if he don't want any watchers. I
don't mind settin' up any more 'n a cat-owl. I was up all night twice
last month.

[My private opinion is, that there was no small amount of punch absorbed
on those two occasions, which I think I heard of at the time];--but the
offer is a kind one, and it is n't fair to question how he would like
sitting up without the punch and the company and the songs and smoking.
He means what he says, and it would be a more considerable achievement
for him to sit quietly all night by a sick man than for a good many other
people. I tell you this odd thing: there are a good many persons, who,
through the habit of making other folks uncomfortable, by finding fault
with all their cheerful enjoyments, at last get up a kind of hostility to
comfort in general, even in their own persons. The correlative to loving
our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
Look at old misers; first they starve their dependants, and then
themselves. So I think it more for a lively young fellow to be ready to
play nurse than for one of those useful but forlorn martyrs who have
taken a spite against themselves and love to gratify it by fasting and
watching.

--The time came