ng there, among the ordures of a
city, the beloved child of my invention. From these extremities I was
relieved by a seasonable offer, and I parted from the Genius of Muskegon
for thirty francs. Where she now stands, under what name she is admired
or criticised, history does not inform us; but I like to think she may
adorn the shrubbery of some suburban tea-garden, where holiday
shop-girls hang their hats upon the mother, and their swains (by way of
an approach of gallantry) identify the winged infant with the god of
love.

In a certain cabman's eating-house on the outer boulevard I got credit
for my midday meal. Supper I was supposed not to require, sitting down
nightly to the delicate table of some rich acquaintances. This
arrangement was extremely ill-considered. My fable, credible enough at
first, and so long as my clothes were in good order, must have seemed
worse than doubtful after my coat became frayed about the edges, and my
boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors. The
allowance of one meal a day, besides, though suitable enough to the
state of my finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The restaurant was
a place I had often visited experimentally, to taste the life of
students then more unfortunate than myself; and I had never in those
days entered it without disgust, or left it without nausea. It was
strange to find myself sitting down with avidity, rising up with
satisfaction, and counting the hours that divided me from my return to
such a table. But hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had spent
my ready cash, and could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or
hunks of bread, I must depend entirely on that cabman's eating-house,
and upon certain rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls. Dijon
(for instance) might get paid for some of his pot-boiling work, or else
an old friend would pass through Paris; and then I would be entertained
to a meal after my own soul, and contract a Latin Quarter loan, which
would keep me in tobacco and my morning coffee for a fortnight. It might
be thought the latter would appear the more important. It might be
supposed that a life, led so near the confines of actual famine, should
have dulled the nicety of my palate. On the contrary, the poorer a man's
diet, the more sharply is he set on dainties. The last of my ready cash,
about thirty francs, was deliberately squandered on a single dinner;
and a great part of my time when I was alone was p