thin its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night,
and departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours sojourn gave
me a solemn and "realizing sense" of its marked worth,--for, when,
tired and listless, I asked for a servant to assist me, the waiter said
he would send the housekeeper. Accordingly, when, a few moments after,
it knocked at the door with light, light finger, (see De la Motte
Fouque,) I drawled, "Come in," and the Queen of Sheba stood before me,
clad in purple and fine linen, with rings on her fingers and bells on
her toes. I stared in dismay, and perceived myself rapidly
transmigrating into a ridiculus mus. My gray and dingy
travelling-dress grew abject, and burned into my soul like tunic of
Nessus. I should as soon have thought of asking Queen Victoria to
brush out my hair as that fine lady in brocade silk and Mechlin lace.
But she was good and gracious, and did not annihilate me on the spot,
as she easily have done, for which I shall thank her as long as I live.

"You sent for me?" she inquired, with the blandest accents imaginable.
I can't tell a lie, pa,--you know I can't tell a lie; besides, I had
not time to make up one, and I said, "Yes," and then, of all stupid
devices that could filter into my brain, I must needs stammer out that
I should like a few matches! A pretty thing to bring a dowager duchess
up nine pairs of stairs for!

"I will ring the bell," she said, with a tender, reproachful sweetness
and dignity, which conveyed without unkindness the severest rebuke
tempered by womanly pity, and proceeded to instruct me in the nature
and uses of the bell-rope, as she would any little dairy-maid who had
heard only the chime of cow-bells all the days of her life. Then she
sailed out of the room, serene and majestic, like a seventy-four
man-of-war, while I, a squalid, salt-hay gunlow, (Venetian blind-ed
into gondola,) first sank down in confusion, and then rose up in fury
and brushed all the hair out of my head.

"I declare," I said to Halicarnassus, when we were fairly beyond
ear-shot of the city next morning, "I don't approve of sumptuary laws,
and I like America to be the El Dorado of the poor man, and I go for
the largest liberty of the individual; but I do think there ought to be
a clause in the Constitution providing that servants shall not be
dressed and educated and accomplished up to the point of making people
uncomfortable."

"No," said Halicarnassus, sleepily