the temple of
Serapis, and the monument of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue
of the divinity.

--Whew!--said I to myself,--that sounds a little like what we college
boys used to call a "squirt."--The Master guessed my thought and said,
smiling,

--That is from one of my old lectures. A man's tongue wags along quietly
enough, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know
what you are thinking--you're thinking this is a squirt. That word has
taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows. But it
did a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it
oftenest.

I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on
the Capitalist, and as well convinced that any fancy of mine that he
was like to make love to her was a mistake. The good woman is too much
absorbed in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor," as
she delights to call her son, to be the prey of any foolish desire of
changing her condition. She is doing very well as it is, and if the
young man succeeds, as I have little question that he will, I think it
probable enough that she will retire from her position as the head of
a boarding-house. We have all liked the good woman who have lived with
her,--I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record. Her
talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely
correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is
subject to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she
reverts in memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls
the virtues of her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such
as one finds not rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an
establishment like hers; that is to say, an easy-going, harmless,
fetch-and-carry, carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, who
comes up three times (as they say drowning people do) every day, namely,
at breakfast, dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the
waves of life, during the intervals of these events.

It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature
enough, according to my own reckoning, to watch the good woman, and see
what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and
how, in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in
her dispensations of those delicacies which are the exceptional element
in our entertainments. I will not say that