een," as James would
say, seated in the little back parlor of the coffee room in School
Street, sipping Mocha with his particular friend Bill Bliffins, who
had an especial claim upon his kindness, from the fact that he had
already extricated Bill from scrapes innumerable.

Mocha is a great prompter of social and kindly feelings, and prompts,
in _tete-a-tetes_, to that unreserved confidence on one part, and that
obliging interest on the other, which unite two congenial and kindred
spirits in adamantine bonds.

"Jack," said Bill, smiting the marble table emphatically, "you are my
best friend."

"Pooh, pooh! you flatter me," said Jack, blushing like a peony; "I've
never done any thing for you."

"Yes, you have, and you know it," persisted Bliffins. "Didn't you
fight Lieutenant Jenkins, of the Salamander, when I ought to have
fought him myself? Haven't you endorsed my notes when nobody else
would back my paper?"

"I'll do it again, my boy," said Jack, with a gush of enthusiastic
feeling.

"Ahem! your name on short or long paper isn't exactly what it used to
be," said Bill, rather unfeelingly, perhaps.

"True, true," returned Jack, in a more subdued tone; "I haven't got
many friends left in the synagogues."

"But what you have done, Jack," continued Bliffins, with enthusiasm,
"emboldens me to trespass yet further on your patience."

"With all my heart," said Jack; and there was no reservation implied
in the hearty tone in which the words were uttered.

"Then listen to my story, as the postilion of Longjumeau sings. Hear
me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear."

"I'll be mute as the codfish in the House of Representatives."

"Well, then," said Bill, in a solemn tone, "I'm dead broke."

"Dead broke?"

"Yes; I'm running on my last hundred."

"Impossible!"

"True, though, for all that. Yet my circumstances are not so
desperate, either. There's a vacant clerkship in the secretary of
state's office; and the governor has been sounded, and I think he
might be disposed to give it to me."

"Go to him at once, then, my dear boy. If he wants any reference, send
him to me. I'll endorse your character, as I used to your paper when
my name was worth something on 'change. Go to him at once."

"It's easy to say it, Jack; but the fact is, that I have such a
confounded hesitating address that I fear I should make an unfavorable
impression, and ruin my cause; whereas, if a plausible, voluble fellow
like yourse