ny-peaked wooden houses which are scattered
about the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second
story projecting over the foundation, as if it frowned at the novelty
around it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though,
being centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would
have brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own
reasons for never parting with, either by auction or private sale.
There seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his
birthplace; for, often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and
standing there even now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which
would have compelled him to surrender the house to his creditors. So
here he dwelt with bad luck till good should come.

Here, then, in his kitchen--the only room where a spark of fire took
off the chill of a November evening--poor Peter Goldthwaite had just
been visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview,
Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced downward at his dress,
parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown.
His upper garment was a mixed surtout, woefully faded, and patched
with newer stuff on each elbow; beneath this he wore a threadbare
black coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with
others of a different pattern; and, lastly, though he lacked not a
pair of gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been
partially turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter's shins
before a scanty fire. Peter's person was in keeping with his goodly
apparel. Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked and lean-bodied, he
was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and
empty hopes till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash nor
stomach more substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite,
crack-brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very
brilliant figure in the world had he employed his imagination in the
airy business of poetry instead of making it a demon of mischief in
mercantile pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless
as a child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
which Nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed
circumstances will permit any man to be.

As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth looking round at the
disconsolate old kitchen his eyes began to kindle with the
illumination of an en