habited
streets; for, as I have said before, the very dogs had crept away that
night into secure corners, and not even a pariah chimney-sweep, with his
dingy blanket drawn close around him, nodded and dozed by a watch-box or
slept on a door-step.

I crept across the space that divided me from this cynosure of warmth
and luxury, as a poor, draggled moth might do, to bask in the
revivifying light of an astral lamp, attracted beyond my power to
resist, to pause before the resplendent window, rich in green and purple
and amber rotund vases, whose transparent contents were set forth and
revealed by fiery jets of gas, toward which I feebly stretched my
half-frozen fingers.

There was a splendid vision, also, of goldfish, in glass globes, jars of
leaden rock-work, baskets of waxen fruits and flowers, crystal bottles
containing rose and amber essences; but, above all, there was
light--there was heat.

With one greedy, insatiate gaze my eyes swept in the details of this
mimic Eden, and, in another moment, my hand turned the knob of the
ground-glass door near the window, and I found myself in paradise!

Rest, shelter, heat--these must I have or perish, and, but for the
timely refuge of this thrice-blessed apothecary's shop, I might have
left this retrospect unwritten!

I staggered to a chair, and seated myself, unbidden, by the almost
red-hot stove, and cowered above it for a time, oblivious of all else.

Then I looked timidly around me.

The master of this Eden was standing, at the moment when he first caught
my eyes, holding up a bottle, scrutinizingly, between his face and the
light, one of many of the same sort that a lad, in a long, white apron,
was engaged in washing.

The odor of the various drugs and essences over which he presided formed
an aromatic atmosphere singularly suggestive of incense, as did his
costume, that of a high-priest of the temple; but, very soon discarding
a gray-linen cape or talma, worn for the protection of his speckless
coat, and tossing a bundle of corks rather disdainfully to his
assistant, the head of the establishment came politely forward, standing
on the other side of the stove, with clasped hands, expectantly.

"You will tell me your errand here when you are quite ready," he said,
kindly. "Do rest and warm yourself first. The stove has a narcotic
tendency when one has just come out of cold like this! The thermometer
has fallen twenty degrees since noonday; but that is only half th