in love. Certainly this was nothing
new to his excitable nature; on the contrary, his love was eternal,
though its object often changed. Every lady of his acquaintance had, in
her turn, been worshiped by him. Even the elderly cousin had been for a
time the subject of his dreams.

On this occasion, however, Mr. Specht's love had some solid foundation.
He had discovered a young woman, a well-to-do householder, the widow of
a fur-merchant, with a round face and a pleasant pair of nut-brown eyes.
He followed her to the theatre and in the public gardens, walked past
her windows as often as he could, and did all that in him lay to win her
heart.

He disturbed the quiet of her bereaved life by showers of anonymous
notes, in which he threatened to quit this sublunary scene if she
despised him. In the list of advertisements, among fresh caviare,
shell-fish, and servants wanting places, there appeared, to the
astonishment of the public, numerous poetical effusions, where Adele,
the name of the widow, was made prominent either in an acrostic, or else
by its component letters being printed in large capitals. At length
Specht had not been able to resist taking the quartette into his
confidence on the subject. The two basses were amazed at such poetical
efforts having proceeded from their office. True, they had often
ridiculed them with others, while Specht inwardly groaned over
counting-house criticism; but now that they knew one of themselves to
have been the perpetrator, the <i>esprit de corps</i> awoke, and they not
only received his confessions kindly, but lent him their assistance in
bribing the watchman in the widow's street, and serenading her, on which
occasion a window had been seen to open, and something white to appear
for a few minutes. Specht was now at the summit of earthly felicity, and
as that condition is not a reticent one, he imprudently extended his
confidence to others of his colleagues, and so it was that the matter
came to the ears of Pix.

And now there began in the local advertiser a most extraordinary game of
hide-and-seek. There were numerous insertions appointing a Mr. S. to a
rendezvous with one dear to him in every possible part of the town.
Wherever the place, Specht regularly repaired to it, and never found her
whom he sought, but suffered from every variety of weather, was repulsed
by stranger ladies, and had the end of a cigar thrown into his face by a
shoemaker's apprentice, whom he mistook for