—If it be so, alas for him, indeed. Runs off very smoothly, sir. Beautiful pathos. But do you think the sentiment just?"
"As to that," said the little dried-up man, "I think it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to be all alive in well-doing."
"Glad to hear it, and hope you will do well, as the doctors say. But who snowed the odes about here?"
"I cannot say; I have not been here long."
"Wasn't an angel, was it? Come, you say you feel genial, let us do as the rest, and have cards."
"Thank you, I never play cards."
"A bottle of wine?"
"Thank you, I never drink wine."
"Cigars?"
"Thank you, I never smoke cigars."
"Tell stories?"
"To speak truly, I hardly think I know one worth telling."
"Seems to me, then, this geniality you say you feel waked in you, is as water-power in a land without mills. Come, you had better take a genial hand at the
