ck of
motive that puzzled him. His dubious cordiality was doled out under
protest. As an exhibitor would clutch a vicious ape, he grabbed at every
show of feeling, and almost throttled the most pitiful courtesy, in his
nervous dread of its doing him some bodily harm. There was a low cunning
in his very acceptance of any little kindness. The sly way in which he
insinuated his withered face into my morning papers, and the smirk of
satisfaction with which he gloated on the triumph of having gratuitously
gleaned their entire contents, was in keeping with every other ludicrous
phase of his distorted nature. He looked upon me as a paragon of
stupidity; and I fear I considered him a piece of personal property, and
felt as much pride in the possession as did Barnum in his Aztec
children.

I do not think the acquaintance tended in any way to exaggerate my ideas
of human purity. Though it extended through several years, no guilty act
I ever heard of detracted from his deserved reputation for beastliness.
My surmises never ventured to the hazardous period of infancy, or risked
the doubtful thought that kith or kin _could_ have loved him; but I have
often wondered if there ever _was_ a time when his rapacity found
employment in the robbing of a hen's nest, or his grasping ambition
culminated in the swop of a jack-knife. I wondered if in all the
grotesque concomitants that congregated to make up the hideous whole,
there existed a redeeming trait. Yes, there was _one_,--one I discovered
in the tears that sprung from his unrelenting eyes and rained on his
cadaverous cheeks. What was the anguish that shook his beastly frame?
what the agony that tore his grasping nature? who was the Moses that
smote water from this rock?

Dear hearers, it is here we find the text of the sermon, and here
commenceth the preaching.

* * * * *

Early one summer, the grasping little door bit to for good, and I missed
its mangy proprietor for probably four months. Had he planted himself in
the earth and regerminated, he could not have been more freshened. His
emaciated carcass fairly blossomed with magnificence; and gaudy ornament
sprouted all over him. It peeped through his shirt-front in flashy
studs, it twined on his fingers in glittering rings, it trailed around
his waist in glowing velvet, and expanded over his thin legs and arms in
a forest of broadcloth. 'Tis true, the shiny collar _would_ get over his
ears, the coat