such an unaffected ordinary tone of voice that they took no note
of the _quodlibets_. He enjoyed this much more than causing a laugh or
being complimented. But taking his life through, he was simply
unfortunate in everything, and his worst failures were when he made
wisely directed energetic efforts to benefit himself or others. He
rarely complained or grieved, having in him a deep _fond_ of what I, for
want of a better term, call _Indian nature_, or stoicism, which is common
in Americans, and utterly incomprehensible to, or rarely found in, a
European.

The death of my father left me a fifth of his property, which was
afterwards somewhat augmented by a fourth share of my poor brother's
portion. For one year I drew no money from the inheritance, but went on
living as before on my earnings, so that my wife remarked it really took
me a year to realise that I had any money. After some months I bought a
house in Locust Street, just opposite to where my father had lived, and
in this house I remained six months previously to going to Europe in
1869. We had coloured servants, and I never in all my life, before or
since, lived so well as during this time. The house was well furnished;
there was even the great luxury of no piano, which is a great condition
of happiness.

This year I was fearfully busy. As I had taken the dramatic criticism in
hand, for which alone we had always employed a man, I went during twelve
months 140 times to the opera, and every evening to several theatres, _et
cetera_. Once I was caught beautifully. There had been an opera bouffe,
the "Grande Duchesse" or something, running for two or three weeks, and I
had written a criticism on it. This was laid over by "press of matter,"
but as the same play was announced for the next night with the same
performers, we published the critique. But it so chanced that the opera
by some accident was not played! The _Evening Bulletin_, my old paper,
rallied me keenly on this blunder, and I felt badly. John Forney, jun.,
however, said it was mere rubbish of no consequence. He was such an
arrant Bohemian and hardened son of the press, that he regarded it rather
as a joke and a feather in our caps, indicating that we were a bounding
lot, and not tied down to close observances. Truly this is a very fine
spirit of freedom, but it may be carried too far, as I think it was by a
friend of mine, who had but one principle in life, and that was _never_
to write his