e or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of
moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one
despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of
supernatural atrocity full at him!

Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.

The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water,
and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last?"

I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the
second row."

And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and
dumb, and as blind as a badger!"

Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger
and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way
for him to do?

THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869]

He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.
And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his
work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the "Sanctum" door
and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting,
perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would
as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he
begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life
away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.
He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half
length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad,
and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the
floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the
arm of the chair. But it is still observable that with all his changes
of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of
dignity. From time to time he yawns, and stretches, and scratches
himself with a tranquil, mangy enjoyment, and now and then he grunts a
kind of stuffy, overfed grunt, which is full of animal contentment. At
rare and long intervals, however, he sighs a sigh that is the eloquent
expression of a secret confession, to wit "I am useless and a nuisance,
a cumberer of the earth." The bore and his comrades--for there are
usually from two to four on hand, day and night--mix into the
conversation when men come in to see the editors for a moment on
business; they hold noisy talks among themselves about politics in
particular, and all other subjects