y landlady while I was boarding a year ago on St.
John's Park. Mr. Green, our attic boarder, went off suddenly one day to
see a friend in the country, as he said. Of course our landlady
searched his room, with a view of reading his letters; and in a brown
hair-trunk, with a boot-jack, a razor-strop, a box of Seidlitz powders,
and an odd volume of Young's Night Thoughts, she found the following
manuscript. The females of the house were satisfied with reading such
letters as were left by Mr. Green in his apartment, and so this paper
was handed over to me. I may say that it was marked with pencil,
"Declined with Thanks."

"THE PUN FIEND.

"BY C. GREEN.

"I used to be corpulent, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful. I am gaunt, pale,
and morose now. I used to sleep sweetly; but now I toss about upon my
bed, terrified by hideous visions, and feelings as of a clammy hand or
wet cloth laid on my face. I was wont to walk about our streets after
business hours, and on Sundays, with a genuine smile of enjoyment
lighting up my face; but now I hurry along with my eyes cast down, and I
seek by-ways and dark lanes for my rambles. My friends think I am in
love; persons who know me but slightly, suppose me a victim to
remorse--imagine that I wear a hair shirt, and macerate my flesh. They
are all wrong. An old bachelor like myself has long ago buried the
light of love in a tomb, and set a seal upon the great stone at the
door; and as for remorse, I owe no tailor any thing, and do not at
present blame myself for any great fault, except having once subscribed
for six months to the New York _Morning Cretan_. Nevertheless, my face
grows haggard, my step weary, and even our Thursday's beef _a la mode_
fails to tempt my enfeebled appetite.

"I am haunted, haunted by a foul fiend. He meets me at six, P.M., in our
festive dining-room, and the fork or spoon drops from my nerveless
grasp. He follows me up to the parlor, where I sometimes talk of an
evening to Miss Pipkin (Miss P. is our fourth story, front), and I
become silent in his presence, and Pipkin votes me a bore. He sits by my
side when I am playing at whist, and I trump my partner's trick, and the
dear old game becomes disgusting. He even dared once to follow me into
church, but I cried 'Avaunt!' in a tone so peremptory, that he fled for
a moment. He joined me, however, as soon as service was over, and walked
from Tenth Street to Madison Square, with his grizzly arm thurst through
mine, an