ybody into the belief that I
could do that sort of thing every time, and it ought not to be expected
of me. Suppose Raphael's patrons had tried to keep him screwed up to
the pitch of the Sistine Madonna, and had refused to buy anything which
was not as good as that. In that case I think he would have occupied a
much earlier and narrower grave than the one on which Mr. Morris Moore
hangs his funeral decorations."

"But, my dear," said Hypatia, who was posted on such subjects, "the
Sistine Madonna was one of his latest paintings."

"Very true," said I. "But if he had married as I did, he would have
painted it earlier."

I was walking homeward one afternoon about this time, when I met
Barbel, a man I had known well in my early literary career. He was now
about fifty years of age, but looked older. His hair and beard were
quite gray, and his clothes, which were of the same general hue, gave
me the idea that they, like his hair, had originally been black. Age
is very hard on a man's external appointments. Barbel had an air of
having been to let for a long time, and quite out of repair. But there
was a kindly gleam in his eye, and he welcomed me cordially.

"Why, what is the matter, old fellow?" said he. "I never saw you look
so woe-begone."

I had no reason to conceal anything from Barbel. In my younger days he
had been of great use to me, and he had a right to know the state of my
affairs. I laid the whole case plainly before him.

"Look here," he said, when I had finished; "come with me to my room; I
have something I would like to say to you there."

I followed Barbel to his room. It was at the top of a very dirty and
well-worn house, which stood in a narrow and lumpy street, into which
few vehicles ever penetrated, except the ash and garbage-carts, and the
rickety wagons of the venders of stale vegetables.

"This is not exactly a fashionable promenade," said Barbel, as we
approached the house, "but in some respects it reminds me of the
streets in Italian towns, where the palaces lean over toward each other
in such a friendly way."

Barbel's room was, to my mind, rather more doleful than the street. It
was dark, it was dusty, and cobwebs hung from every corner. The few
chairs upon the floor and the books upon a greasy table seemed to be
afflicted with some dorsal epidemic, for their backs were either gone
or broken. A little bedstead in the corner was covered with a spread
made of New York "Herald