e the ice was broken, his nature bubbled over very boyishly at times,
and his confidence, once bestowed, was irrevocable. Like most men of his
temperament, he was keenly susceptible to deferential flattery, and
impatient of the slightest infraction of his dignity, which he guarded
punctiliously at all points. It was more this disposition always to wait
for overtures from others, and to slightly repel their first
manifestations, from his inveterate shyness, than any settled
determination on his part, that made him such an alien from general
association. Nervous, fastidious, exacting--what had he in common with
the texture of the new society in which he found himself, and what right
had he to fancy himself neglected where the "go-ahead" principle alone
was recognized, and time was esteemed too precious to waste in ceremony?

Yet this injured feeling pursued him through life and made one of his
peculiarities, so that he drew more and more closely, as years passed
on, into his own shell, which may be said to have comprised his
household, his comforts, his hobbies, and his narrow neighborhood, in
which he was idolized, and the sympathy of which was very soothing to
his fastidious pride.

Nothing so fosters haughtiness and egotism as a sphere like this, and it
may be doubted whether the crowned heads of the world receive more
adulation from their households than men so situated.

From the moment he set his foot on the threshold of his own house, nay,
on the broad, quiet pavement of his own street, with its stately row of
ancient Lombardy poplars on one side, and blank, high-walled lumber-yard
on the other, he felt himself a sovereign--king of a principality! king
of a neighborhood;--what great difference is there, after all?

It was only the hypochondriacal character of his mind that shielded him
from that chief human absurdity, pomposity. He needed all the praise and
consolation his friends could bestow simply to sustain him--no danger of
inflation in his case! He was shut away from self-complacency (the only
vice to which virtue is subjected) by the melancholy that permeated his
being, and which was probably in his case an inheritance--constitutional,
as it is said to be with things.

Perhaps it will be well to give, in this place, some more vivid idea of
our home, which, after all, like the shell of the sea-fish, most
frequently shapes itself to fit the necessities and habits of its
occupants.

Our house had been bui