the luxury of which they are
indebted to the skill, labor and industry of others. Rhapsody came down
gracefully, and quite as manfully, to his level, only changing the scene
of his endeavors to the city of monuments. Rhapsody had feelings--pride.
He sought obscurity, in which he might perform the necessary labors of
his craft, to enable him to keep his head above water, and await that
tide in the affairs of men, when perhaps he might again be drifted to
fortune and favor.

Rhapsody took lodgings in a respectable hotel; he arose late--took
breakfast, read the news--smoked--lounged--dressed, and went through the
ordinary evolutions of a gentleman of leisure, until he dined at 3 P.
M.; then, by a circuitous way, he proceeded to his shop--put on his
working attire, and went at it faithfully, until midnight, when, having
accomplished his maximum of toil, he re-dressed--walked to his
hotel--talked politics--fashions, etc., took his glass of wine with a
friend, and very quietly retired; to rise on the morrow, and go through
the same routine from day to day, only varying it a little by an eye to
an eligible marriage, or a place.

Rhapsody--we must give him the credit of the fact--from no mawkish
feeling of his own, but from force of public opinion, resorted to this
secret manner of eking out his daily bread, and acting out his part of
the fictitious gentleman. During one of his morning
lounges--accidentally, Rhapsody met Miss Somebody in the street. They
had not met for some few years, and it may not be troublesome to
conceive, that Miss Alice--under the new order of things--was more
pleased than otherwise to renew the acquaintance of other days, with a
gentleman still supposed to be--and his attire and manner surely gave
no sign of an altered state of affairs--in a position recognizable by
society.

Rhapsody renewed his attentions to the Somebody family, and Miss Alice
in particular--with fervor. He admitted himself no longer an _attache_
of government, but offset the deprivation of government patronage, by
asserting that he was graduating for a higher sphere in life than the
drudgery and abjectness of a clerkship--he was studying political
economy, and the learned profession of the law!

The Somebodies were _game_; not a concession would they make to stern
indigence; it was merely for the sake of quietude, said Mrs. Somebody,
and the solace of retirement from the gay and tempestuous whirls of
society, that _we_ changed t