t, as well as, at that
particular moment, in an impatient, feverish hurry to get on with my
treatise on the "Advantages of Virtue," which I felt now oozing out of
my subsiding brain with an alarming rapidity, I promised to read,
notice, investigate, analyze, to the uttermost extent of his wishes, or
at least of my ability.

I could scarcely keep myself screwed down to common courtesy till the
moment of his departure; a proceeding which he accomplished with a most
commendable self-possession and deliberate politeness. When he was
fairly gone, I poked my head out, and called my boy.

"Peter."

"Sir."

"Did you see that little old gentleman, Peter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Should you know him again, Peter?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, if he ever come here again, Peter, tell him I am not in."

"Yes, sir."

I reentered my little study, and closed the door after me with a slam,
which could only have been perceptible to those who knew my ordinary
still and mild manner. There might have been also a slight accent in my
way of turning the key, and (candor is a merit!) I could not repress a
brief exclamation of displeasure at the little old gentleman with his
magazine, who had broken in so provokingly upon my "essay on virtue."
"Virtue or no virtue," thought I, "I wish him to the d----."

My room is on the ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets
in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which
I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of
resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing
myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when--another knock at the
door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I
had "gone out." Never dreaming of my old enemy, I betrayed too much of
my person to withdraw, and I was recognized and pounced upon by the
little old gentleman who had come back to inform me that he intended, as
soon as the increase of his subscription would permit, to enlarge and
improve the "North American Thespian Magazine," and to employ all the
writers in town. "I intend also," said he, and he was in the act of
again laying aside that everlasting hat and cane, when a cry of fire in
the neighborhood, and the smell of the burning rafters attracted him
into the street, where, as I feared, he escaped unhurt. In many respects
fires are calamities; but I never saw a more forcible exemplification of
Shakspeare's remark, "There is some spi