rning over a third chop, when the door opened and a
stoutish, middle-aged little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped
into the room.

"Silas Jaffrey," said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm,
picking up me and the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. "Be
acquainted!"

Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for
cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly
as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he
had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous
freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and
trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with
its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating
an omelet.

"Silas will take care of you," said Mr. Sewell, taking down his hat from
a peg behind the door. "I've got the cattle to look after. Tell him if
you want anything."

While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down the narrow
bar-room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough,
occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe of auburn hair
which stood up pertly round his head and seemed to possess a luminous
quality of its own.

"Don't I find it a little slow up here at the Corners? Not at all, my
dear sir. I am in the thick of life up here. So many interesting things
going on all over the world--inventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad
disasters, mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians, statesmen,
distinguished travelers, prodigies of all kinds turning up everywhere.
Very few events or persons escape me. I take six daily city papers,
thirteen weekly journals, all the monthly magazines, and two
quarterlies. I could not get along with less. I couldn't if you asked
me. I never feel lonely. How can I, being on intimate terms, as it were,
with thousands and thousands of people? There's that young woman out
West. What an entertaining creature _she_ is!--now in Missouri, now in
Indiana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, and all the time
shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed
it! Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles
and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs
of giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one may say that historical
colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of
Bunk--no, it is the