ok fever when you were little?--What do I mean? Why,
ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an
immense amount were hidden in them.--So, too, you must all remember some
splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you with
hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank in your life which nothing
has ever filled up.--O.T. quitted our household carrying with him the
passionate regrets of the more youthful members. He was an ingenious
youngster; wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two initials given above
with great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they
were all gone; but the other day I found them on a certain door which I
will show you some time. How it surprised me to find them so near the
ground! I had thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.T. when he
went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have a ship, and the
other a mar_tin_-house (last syllable pronounced as in the word _tin_).
Neither ever came; but, oh, how many and many a time I have stolen to the
corner,--the cars pass close by it at this time,--and looked up that long
avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to
look northward, that there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in
one hand and the mar_tin_-house in the other!

[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, as well as all I have
said, was told to the whole company. The young fellow whom they call John
was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, the fumes of
which came in, not ungrateful, through the open window. The divinity-
student disappeared in the midst of our talk. The poor relation in black
bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articulations were elbow-
joints, had gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look of soul-
subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had
passed her and ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous point of
etiquette in our boarding-house; in fact, between ourselves, they make
such an awful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have
them simple enough not to think of such matters at all. Our land-lady's
daughter said, the other evening, that she was going to "retire"; where-
upon the young fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted on lighting
her to the foot of the staircase. Nothing would induce her to pass by him,
until the schoolmistress, saying in good pla