ng no imaginable error he had not at some time or other fallen into, nor
any conceivable mischance to which he had not been exposed. Inconsolable
widows, attached wives, fond mothers, newly-married brides, engaged
young ladies were by some _contretemps_ continually the subject of his
attachments; and the least mishap which followed the avowal of his passion
was to be heartily laughed at and obliged to leave the neighborhood.
Duels, apologies, actions at law, compensations, etc., were of every-day
occurrence, and to such an extent, too, that any man blessed with a smaller
bump upon the occiput would eventually have long since abandoned the
pursuit, and taken to some less expensive pleasure. But poor Sparks, in the
true spirit of a martyr, only gloried the more, the more he suffered; and
like the worthy man who continued to purchase tickets in the lottery for
thirty years, with nothing but a succession of blanks, he ever imagined
that Fortune was only trying his patience, and had some cool forty thousand
pounds of happiness waiting his perseverance in the end. Whether this prize
ever did turn up in the course of years, I am unable to say; but certainly,
up to the period of his history I now speak of, all had been as gloomy
and unrequiting as need be. Power, who knew something of every man's
adventures, was aware of so much of poor Sparks's career, and usually
contrived to lay a trap for a confession that generally served to amuse us
during an evening,--as much, I acknowledge, from the manner of the recital
as anything contained in the story. There was a species of serious
matter-of-fact simplicity in his detail of the most ridiculous scenes that
left you convinced that his bearing upon the affair in question must have
greatly heightened the absurdity,--nothing, however comic or droll in
itself, ever exciting in him the least approach to a smile. He sat with his
large light-blue eyes, light hair, long upper lip, and retreating chin,
lisping out an account of an adventure, with a look of Listen about him
that was inconceivably amusing.

"Come, Sparks," said Power, "I claim a promise you made me the other night,
on condition we let you off making the oyster-patties at ten o'clock; you
can't forget what I mean." Here the captain knowingly touched the tip of
his ear, at which signal the cornet colored slightly, and drank off his
wine in a hurried, confused way. "He promised to tell us, Major, how
he lost the tip of his left ear.