ny are passing at this moment
whose very hearts would leap with joy to find such a fellow as I am,'
accustomed to in-door and out, wages no object, and no objection to
travel! '" Possessed with this notion, I could not help fancying that
in every look that met mine as I went, I could read something like an
inquiry, a searching glance that seemed to say, "Bless me! ain't that
Con? As I live, there's Con Cregan! What a rare piece of fortune to
chance upon him at this juncture!"

I own it did require a vivid and warm imagination so to interpret the
expressions which met my eyes at every moment, seeing that the part of
the town into which I had wandered was that adjoining to the docks,--a
filthy, gloomy quarter, chiefly resorted to by Jew slop-sellers,
ship-chandlers, and such like, with here and there a sailors' ordinary"
usually kept by a negro or half-breed.

I had eaten nothing that day, and it was now late in the afternoon, so
that it was with a very strong interest I peeped occasionally into the
little dens, where, under a paper lantern with the inscription, "All
for Twelve Cents," sat a company, usually of sailors and watermen, whose
fare harmonized most unpleasantly with their features.

The combat between a man's taste and his exchequer is never less
agreeable than when it concerns a dinner. To feel that you have a soul
for turtle and truffles, and yet must descend to mashed potatoes and
herrings; to know that a palate capable of appreciating a salmi des
perdreaux must be condemned to the indignity of stock fish,--what an
indignity is that! The whole man revolts at it! You feel, besides, that
such a meal is unrelieved by those suggestive excursions of fancy which
a well-served table abounds in. In the one case you eat like the beast
of the field,--it is a question of supporting nature, and no more; in
the other, there is a poetry interwoven that elevates and exalts. With
what discursive freedom does the imagination range from the little
plate of oysters that preludes your soup, to pearl fishery and the coral
reefs, "with moonlight sleeping on the breaking surf!" And then your
soup, be it turtle or mulligatawny, how associated is it with the
West Indies or the East, bearing on its aromatic vapor thousands of
speculative reflections about sugar and slavery, pepper-pots, straw
hats, pickaninnies, and the Bishop of Barbadoes; or the still grander
themes of elephants, emeralds, and the Indus, with rajahs, tigers,
pun