was anything but calculated to inspire confidence in their trustworthiness. "The rusty grate, unconscious of a fire," stood shivering in the yawning fireplace, above which a cloudy mezzotint, conveying the faintest possible intimation of a blasted heath, with a gibbet in perspective, decorated a wall, which time and damp had reduced from its primitive shade of green to the most miscellaneous diversity of tints. Here was an appearance of things, not certainly the most favourable for dissipating the unpleasant feelings that had for some time been fretting my lesser intestines to the tenuity of fiddlestrings; but I put a bold face upon the matter, and after a leisurely survey of the apartment, deposited my self in bed. Sleep, however, was not to be thought of till the arrival of the person who was to share the apartment with me, and I lay forming all sorts of speculations as to his probable appearance. At length, towards midnight, a heavy step sounded on the staircase, and I heard some one advanc. ing with a stately tread to the room in whieh I lay! Now, then, for a solution of my uncertainty ! I half raised myself on my elbow to examine the person that should enter. The door opened leisurely, and a figure advanced into the room, that increased rather than abated my perplexity. It was that of a tall, powerfully-built man, dressed all in black, with a cloak of the same colour about his shoulders, and as he held the candle before him as though he held it not, its light fell upon features of a character singularly impressive, but pale and blasted, as it were, with untold woe. His long raven hair fell away in masses from his forehead, like blackening pines upon a lightning-scathed mountain summit, and his eyes burned with a dull, moveless glare. He appeared to be utterly unconscious of my presence, notwithstanding my endeavours to excite his attention by sundry admonitory coughs and hems. Finding these of no avail, I resolved to attack him more directly, and, in as indifferent a tone as I could muster, exclaimed, "Good night, sir!”-no answer-" Good night, sir!" with a stronger emphasis-still not a word; and it was not till I had repeated the salutation several times that he turned his eyes upon me. And oh! what an inward hell did that look reveal!-in words that dropped like minute-guns from his, lips he said, "I wish you may have a good ntght, sir." This was enough; I was thoroughly relieved of any desire for farther converse with a gentleman of this kidney; so he relapsed into his abstraction, and I into my pillow and my speculations. I was fatigued, and would fain have slept, but this I soon found to be impossible. In vain I turned from the left side to right, from right to left, and then in despair threw myself on my face, and dug my head into the pillow. I tried to think of discourses on political economy, of sermons on temperance, of all the most sovereign narcotics I could recall. I repeated the alphabet letter by letter, and then groped my way through the multiplication-table; but it was of no use. Sleep was not to be so cajoled. The gentleman in black had betaken himself to bed. The room was as dark as midnight could make it, and I heard a sigh, and the curtains drawn closely round in front of where he lay. Strange precaution, I thought. What can he mean? Has he the same doubts of me that are haunting me with regard to him, and so wishes to place even the slight barrier of a piece of dimity between us? Or per haps the gentleman is conscious of sleeping in rather an ungainly style, tosses the bed-clothes off him perhaps, or lies with his mouth agape, like a fish in the death-pang, and may not wish the morning light to disclose his weakness? But this comfortable view of the matter soon faded away as the remembrance of his appearance pressed upon my vision. Those features so pale and rigid; that massive figure, trained in no ordinary toils; those eyes dead to all outward objects, and lighted up with fires, that seemed inwardly consuming him, stared vividly before me. I saw him as he entered the room, and went through all the operation of undressing, with a motion merely mechanical. What could so have palsied the senses and the will? Was it remorse for some unutterable guilt that prey ed upon his heart, or was he even then meditating some act of inexpiable crime? I was lying there alone, in darkness, with a felon, perhaps a murderer! And then his answer to my friendly salutation, "I wish you may have a good night, sir!" came back upon my ear. May have a good night! There was, then a doubt, which he even confessed. I stirred in bed with as much noise as possible, coughing at the same time, to see if I could elicit any cor. responding sound from my opposite neighbour. But all was hushed. I could not even catch his breathing. Oh, I thought, he must have gone to sleep. He, at least, takes the matter easy. But still his words "I wish you may have a good night, sir!"-haunted me. What was there to prevent my having a good night, but something of which he himself was alone conscious? The night was a quiet one, and our room too much out of the way to be visited by any of the usual sleep-dispelling noises of an inn. Would to Heaven it had been less so! Again I thought of the curtains drawn so carefully in front of his bed. Might he not behind them be preparing the knife, with which he was to spring upon my secure slumbers? coughed louder than before, to assure him that I was still wakeful. This horrible fancy now took entire possession of my mind. His sepulchral "I wish you may have a good night!" pleaded a perpetual alarum in my ears. It was an intimation to settle accounts with the world. He would not kill my unprepared spirit. Not he! He was a sentimental murderer, an amateur assassin, and Fate had kindly quoited me into his grasp. I lay riveted to my couch, expecting every moment to hear the curtains torn apart, and to feel his fingers at my throat. Every nerve and faculty were strained to the utmost pitch, till even the suspense grew more fearful than the reality itself could have been. A death-like stillness filled the chamber. Its "very hush and creeping' grew oppressive. The stirring of a mouse would have been worth worlds to me. Worn out with this excitement, I fell into a perturbed and gasping slumber, and, on starting from it, my ear seemed to catch the expiring echo of a groan. It might, however, have only been the wind striking a favourite note in the crannies of the chimney. Day had by this time begun to break, and the gladsome light gave me courage to look out between my curtains. Those of the opposite bed were still down, and its inmate seemed locked in profound repose. I turned my eyes towards the window to strengthen myself by the sight of some cheering object against the anxieties that still hung about my mind, and found that it looked out upon a desolate court, commanding a prospect at the same time of which the leading features were some crazy old chimney-stacks. The sky was wet and weltering, and no sound of life was audible, except the occasional rattle of a cart, blended with the driver's whoop, rousing the echoes of the slumbering streets. The whole feeling of the time and place was as cheerless as possible; and, to complete my discomfort, a superannuated raven, a creature worn with the throes of luckless prophecy, settled upon a chimney right before my eyes, and began croaking its monotonous chaunt of woe. Oh, how that eternal "caw! caw!" did chafe me, "mingling strangely with my fears," and presaging the coming on of some unknown horror! It threw my thoughts back into their old channel. Alarm, however, had now given place to curiosity, and I determined at all hazards to know more of the mysterious man who had occasioned me such a night of torture. I lay intent to catch the minutest sound, but in vain. Fine-ear himself, that hears the grass grow in the fairy-tale, could not have detected the shadow of a breath. This, I thought, is the most unaccountable man I ever met with. He comes nobody knows whence, goes nobody knows where, eats nothing, drinks nothing, and says nothing,-and sleeps like no other mortal beneath the sun. I must, and will sound the heart of this mystery. Here was I, with fevered pulse and throbbing brow, after a night of agony, while the cause of my uneasiness was taking deep draughts of that" tired Nature's sweet restorer," of which his singular appearance and ominous words had effectually robbed me. It was not more strange than provoking. I could bear this state of things no longer, and discharged a volley of tearing coughs, as if all the pulmonary complaints of the town had taken refuge in my in divi. dual chest. Still there was not a movement to indicate the sli htest disturbance on the part of my tormentor. I sprang out of bed, and paced up and down the room, making as much noise as possible by pushing the chairs about, and hitching the dressing-table along the floor. Still my enemy slept on. I rushed to the fire-place, and rattled the shovel and poker against one another. He cannot but stir at this, I thought; and I listened in the expectation of hearing him start. Still the same deathlike silence continued. I caught up the fire-irons, and hurled them together against the grate. They fell with a crash that might have startled the Seven Sleepers.-and I waited in a paroxysm of anxiety for the result which I had anticipated. But there were the close curtains as before, and not a sound issued from behind them to indicate the presence of any living thing. I was in a state bordering upon frenzy. The fearful suspense of the past night, the agony of emotions with which I had been shaken, working upon a body already greatly fatigued, had left me in a fever of excitement, which, if it had continued, must have ended in madness. I was wild with a mixed sensation of dread and curiosity, and suspense. One way or another the torture must be ended. I rushed towards the bed; upsetting the dressing table in my agitation. I tore open the curtains, and there, oh God! lay the cause of all my agony -a suicide-weltering in a pool of blood. I felt my naked foot slip in something moist and slimy. Oh Heaven, the horror of that plashy gore! I fell forwards on the floor, smitten as by a thunderbolt into insensibility. When I revived I found the room crowded with people. The noise of my fall had alarmed the occupants of the room beneath, and they had burst into the chamber where we lay. But my sufferings were not yet at an end. The noises I had made in endeavouring to arouse the stranger had been heard, and were now construed into the strug. gle between the murderer and his victim. How it happened I know not, but the razor with which the suicide had affected his purpose was found within my grasp. This was deemed proof-conclusive of my guilt, and I stood arraigned as a murderer in the eyes of my fellow. men. For months I was the tenant of a dungeon. "It passed, it passed, a weary time;" but at length my trial came. I was acquitted, and again went forth with an untainted name. But the horrors of that night have cast a blight upon my spirit that will cling to it through my life; and I evermore execrate the wretch who first projected the idea of A DOUBLE-BEDDED ROOM. BON GAULtier. FROM ANACREON. ODE III. ONCE about the hour of midnight, Rattled at the door. Says I, Tis a child, so do not fear, And I'm dripping: through the moonless Lit my lamp, the door threw wide, When I see a winged urchin, Bow and quiver at his side! In my own, and the dank moisture Straight he draws, and like a gad-fly Then up springing, shouts with laughter, For my bow is quite uninjured, As you'll find it-to your smart!" W. BENNETT. UNCLE SAM'S PECULIARITIES. AMERICAN BOARDING-HOUSES. THE inmates of a boarding-house in which I "fixed" myself in New York were, the keeper of a hardware store (a merchant), ditto "dry goods," ditto saltery, ditto jewellery, and ditto grocery; a clergyman of the "ecclesiastical" church, who had been brought up in Uncle Sam's navy, but who, previous to entering the church, had been in the legal profession; in the "military" (volunteers), and in a mercantile speculation in the "far West;" and a German citizen, who had lost "dree dousand ponds in Inkland, and only dree dousand dullars in dis Yankee, but liked Inkland best cos de sentiment more free in Inkland." There were also Colonel Islap Otis, of the Franklin Stationary Store, three or four merchants and bankers' clerks, a teacher of the piano. forte, and a lady who "embroidered for a repository,' -a very re. spectable way of gaining a living in the States. All these were very comfortable people, who eat their dinner at two o'clock, if they could find time, and put the affair off until supper-time (seven o'clock), if they were too busy to dine at the "regular meal-hour." Perhaps a better view of the peculiarities of American conversation among those who may be called, as they are in England, the middle class of society, may be obtained by the mimicry of dialogue, than by any description which would avoid the first and second personals. So we will e'en call in the actors themselves at Mrs. Caius Miggs's Boarding-house, and hold the mirror up to nature with true dramatic propriety. The unities shall be preserved, for we will have but one set scene, the dining-room-and the time shall be the 20th July, from five minutes before until twenty minutes after two o'clock; during which the boarders must be let in at the street-door, the dinner served up and eaten, and the desert disposed of. THE DINING-ROOM. MRS. CAIUS MIGGS, and WILBERFORCE HOWARD (a nigger), setting the table in order. MRS. MIGGS. There now! Put down three more knives and forks, and fetch a spare napkin to catch the gravy which will be spilled round the mutton dish; then tell Miss Kate not to be slow in serving up, and mind your p's and q's when you wait at table, Will. WILL. Yas, marm. MRS. MIGGS. Put the 'coon* at the top, and the barn.door hebiddy† at the bottom; let the terrapins‡ be in the middle, the mush, sweet potatoes, and indine corn at each corner, the mutton near the 'coon, and let every one have two plates, so that he can help himself when he wants a clean one. WILL. Yas, marm. An' shull I pup four pieces bread for Culnel Otis, marm? MRS, MIGGS. What for, Will? * Racoon. + A fowl of the masculine gender. + Small tortoises, |