accident, lest the
gentleman should fancy an intentional rudeness. Partly to reward him
for his good behavior, partly because I never did think it worth while
to make two bites of a cherry, and partly because I did not fancy being
poisoned, I gave my fifteen berries to him. He devoured them with
evident relish.

"Does my spoon taste as badly as yours?" I asked.

"My spoon?" inquired he, innocently.

"Yes. You said before that they tasted coppery."

"I don't think," replied this unprincipled man,--"I don't think it was
the flavor of the spoon so much as of the coin which each berry
represented."

If we could only have been at home!

I never made a more unsatisfactory investment in my life than the one I
made in that restaurant. I felt as if I had been swindled, and I said
so to Halicarnassus. He remarked that there was plenty of cream and
sugar. I answered curtly, that the cream was chiefly water, and the
sugar chiefly flour; but if they had been Simon Pure himself, was it
anything but an aggravation of the offence to have them with nothing to
eat them on?

"You might do as they do in France,--carry away what you don't eat,
seeing you pay for it."

"A pocketful of milk and water would be both delightful and
serviceable; but I might take the sugar," I added, with a sudden
thought, upsetting the sugar-bowl into a "Boston Journal" which we had
bought in the train. "I can never use it, but it will be a consolation
to reflect on."

Halicarnassus, who, though fertile in evil conceptions, lacks nerve to
put them into execution, was somewhat startled at this sudden change of
base. He had no idea that I should really act upon his suggestion, but
I did. I bundled the sugar into my pocket with a grim satisfaction;
and Halicarnassus paid his thirty cents, looking--and feeling, as he
afterwards told me--as if a policeman's grip were on his shoulders. If
any restaurant in Boston recollects having been astonished at any time
during the summer of 1862 by an unaccountably empty sugar-bowl, I take
this occasion to explain the phenomenon. I gave the sugar afterwards to
a little beggar-girl, with a dime for a brace of lemons, and shook off
the dust of my feet against Boston at the "B. & W. R. R. D."

Boston is a beautiful city, situated on a peninsula at the head of
Massachusetts Bay. It has three streets: Cornhill, Washington, and
Beacon Streets. It has a Common and a Frog-pond, and many sprightly
squirrels. Its