lived on this block five years last May."

The three besieged Marcus to lay aside his scruples for once, and join
them in visiting this accomplished lady. Marcus fought them until his
patience was exhausted, and then gave in.

The door to which they climbed, bore, on a large and shining plate, the
name "Slapman." This door was opened to them by a tall negro in livery,
which, like the wearer, had a borrowed appearance. As they entered, they
saw a little wiry man, with a pale face full of wrinkles and crowsfeet,
bounding up the first flight of stairs, two steps at a time. When the
little man reached the first landing he looked back, and directed a
strange, suspicious glance at the callers.

The opening of the parlor door discovered a room full of men, who were
sipping wine, eating cold fowl and confections, talking and laughing
loudly with each other, or exchanging repartees with a lady who stood in
the centre of the apartment and shed her light upon all. This lady was
Mrs. Grazella Jigbee Slapman.

Previous to her marriage, she had been not altogether unknown to the
corners of several weekly newspapers, under the name of "Grazella." She
had also cultivated a natural talent for painting, so assiduously, that
a little cabinet piece of hers, representing a cat, a lobster, and a
plate of fruit, was considered good enough to exhibit in the window of a
Broadway print shop, in which her uncle was a silent partner, and was
approvingly paragraphed in a paper partly owned by her first cousin. To
gifts capable of producing results like these, she added a great
aptitude for music; although an incurable indolence, she gracefully
said, had always prevented her from learning the piano. While yet
sustaining the name of Jigbee, she had achieved a high reputation in
private circles as a merciless judge of music. But her conversation had
been, from earliest girlhood, her chief attraction. She possessed the
extraordinary faculty of talking with a dozen persons upon a dozen
different subjects at the same time.

Unlike many people similarly endowed, she did not exercise this
wonderful gift for the brutal purpose of putting down feebler
intellects, but only to elicit TRUTH, which she often declared to be the
sole object of her existence. When, by her alliance with Mr. Slapman, a
thrifty speculator in real estate, she was installed as mistress of a
fine house and furniture, and a few thousand a year, the lady naturally
gathered about her a