a sign of failing circumstances, and must be attended
to.

When Boscobello comes in about half past two of an afternoon for the
usual loan of a hundred dollars to enable him to go on, I amuse myself
by talking to him while I look over his securities. He has two or three
loans to pay up before three o'clock, in different parts of the town,
and we cannot blame him for being in a hurry, but this is no concern of
mine. If he _will_ get into a tight place, one may surely take one's
time at helping him out: and really it does require some little time to
investigate the class of securities he brings, and which are
astonishingly varied. For instance, he brought me to-day as collateral
to an accommodation, a deed to a South Brooklyn block, title clouded; a
Mackerelville second mortgage; ten shares of coal-oil stock; an
undivided quarter right in a guano island, and the note of a President
of the Unterrified Insurance Company. 'How much was the cartage, Bos?'
said I, for you see my great mind descends to the smallest particulars,
and I was benevolent enough to wish to deduct his expenses from the
bonus I was about to charge him for the loan. 'Never mind the cartage,'
said he, 'that's a very strong list, and will command the money any day
in Wall street, but I have a particular reason for getting it of you.'
'The particular reason being,' said I, 'that you can't get it anywhere
else. Jennings,' I continued to my cashier, 'give Mr. Boscobello
ninety-five dollars Norfolk or Richmond due-bills, and take his check
payable in current funds next Saturday for a hundred.'

Poor old Boscobello! A man at forty ought not to look old, but Bos had
often seen the sun rise before he went to bed, and he _had_ been gay, so
all my aunts said. Some stories Bos has told me himself, o' nights at my
house, after having in vain endeavored to induce me to take shares in
the guano island, or 'go into' South Brooklyn water lots. 'I'm too old
for that sort of a thing, Bos,' I say; 'it's quite natural for you to
ask me, and I don't blame you for trying it on, but you must find some
younger man. Tell me about that little affair with the mysterious Cuban
lady; when you only weighed a hundred and forty pounds, and never went
out without a thousand dollars in your pocket--in the blooming days of
youth, Bos, when you went plucking purple pansies along the shore.'

Boscobello weighs over two hundred now, and would have a rush of blood
to the head if he were to