e spirit of
a martyr, he frets and fumes about his condition, and finds a selfish
relief in counting over his grievances in the presence of all who are
good-natured enough to listen. Such a fellow is a social nuisance--away
with him! The fact usually is that the world has more reason to complain
of him than he of the world. For instance, I know a man who has become
misanthropic, but who should hate himself instead of the whole race.

Mr. Jordan Algrieve has become disgusted with life, and confesses than
his experiment with existence has thus far proved a failure. He has
combated with the world, and the world has proved too much for him, and
he acknowledges the defeat. Mr. Algrieve is on the shady side of fifty,
and his hair getting to be of an iron gray. His features are prominent,
with a face wrinkled and shrivelled by discontent and acidity of temper.
His tall figure is bent, not so much by cares and weight of years, as in
a kind of typical submission to the stern decree of an evil destiny.

Strange to say, he is well educated, and graduated with honor at one of
our Eastern colleges. With a knowledge of this fact, it is pitiable to
see him standing at the corner of the street in his busy town in a suit
of seedy black and a shockingly bad hat, chafing his hands together and
pretending to wait for somebody who never comes.

Poor Algrieve, he is a man under the table, and he knows it. He has
tried to be somebody in his way, but has failed sadly in all his
efforts. It is said that Algrieve always had a constitutional aversion
to legitimate and continued labor, but has a passion for making strikes
and securing positions that afford liberal pay for little work.

Thinking a profession too monotonous and plodding, he never took the
trouble to acquire one. As to honest manual toil, that was an expedient
he never so much as dreamed of. In early life he was so unfortunate as
to secure an appointment to a clerkship in the Assembly, and after that
he haunted the State Legislature for five or six winters in hot pursuit
of another place, but his claims failing to be recognized, he relapsed
into the natural belief that his party was in league to proscribe him.
After making a large number of political ventures of a more ambitious
order, and with the same mortifying results, he abandoned that field and
took to speculation in patent rights. He vended a wonderful churn-dash,
circulated a marvellous flatiron, and expatiated through the