1 827.] Some Account of a Lover. 265 



A few days after this, I was apprized that the lover, unable to withstand 

 the shock that this entire rejection of his claims had occasioned, and home 

 down by a complication of misfortunes " too numerous to mention," had 

 taken to his bed ; from whence I received a bieroglyphical scrawl, entreat- 

 ing my instant presence, and affirming that, if I had any desire to behold 

 him yet alive, I must come, "per saltum" or by leaps, 



" Like angels' visits -few, and far between" 



which, seizing my hat, I obeyed. 



Being come to the house, I knocked with that sort of respectable pre- 

 cision which indicates that there is "somebody" waiting for admittance 

 whereto I received that kind of attention which implies that that " some- 

 body" is likely to wait. A length, a begrimed lad made his appearance, 

 with a man's coat on his back, a human being too large one arm buried in 

 a monstrous boot, and, drawn down over his eyes, a huge hat, which, upon 

 discovering me through a crevice in the brim, was, with some difficulty, 

 laid aside. Receiving no answer from this youth to my thrice-repeated 

 inquiry, whether I could see Mr. Diaper or not ? I took the liberty to add 

 a supplementary appeal, by lowering my cane with remarkable perpen- 

 dicularity upon that extremity of the frame terminated by a head. 



The boy, thus appealed to, discovered immediately an irregular aperture 

 in his jaws, from which he emited yells quite anti-silencial and perfectly 

 discordant ; which yells, as if by miracle, pierced the long-discarded tym- 

 panum of an aged hag, who now made her appearance. 



This ancient beldam, placing herself before me, put both her ears into 

 her left eye, and began to listen with it ; that organ of vision, at the same 

 time, carelessly lolling from its sphere with a sang froid and immovcable 

 curiosity not a little astonishing. In vain did I muster the powers of a pair of 

 lungs that might have " torn hell's concave," and pour them into one ear ; 

 in vain did the little boy shriek wildly into the other ; she did but smile 

 complacently, as though she said. " Be such sweet silence eternal !" At 

 last, by furious signs and violent gesticulations, I gave her to understand 

 the purport of my visit, and was conducted to the chamber of my dying 

 friend. 



This was a room situate on the third floor of the house, and stuck (like 

 a parenthesis) in the middle of a long passage. The want of a stove was 

 relieved by the presence of a large fire-place, between which and the win- 

 dows there was evidently a vile collusion. It was. I verily believe, a house 

 of call for the four winds. This yEolian hole was split asunder by a 

 pasteboard diaphragm or screen ; and, in one of these moieties of misery, 

 stretched upon a bed, lay the once graceful, ever graceless, Diaper. 



Here was a scene \ I approached the couch tremblingly he was asleep ! 

 Alas ! disease had got the start of the worm by a strange anticipation. He 

 was of a lean habit of bone. I dropt a few tears but they missed him ! 

 and attempted to accomplish a fleeting remembrance of him, by way of a 

 front likeness, but could cut no pencil fine enough; It was never my for- 

 tune, or misfortune, to behold a living subject cleaner picked. The digging 

 of a grave, as I told the undertaker, was entirely a work of supererogation. 

 Enough to have borne him forth, and, the service of burial performed, to 

 have decently dropt his remains through a crack in the parched earth for 

 it was sultry weather. But of this no more. 



After some time, opening his eyes, my departing friend recognized me, 

 and, raising himself in the bed, began to discourse eloquently upon his 



M.M. New Series. VOL. IV, No. 21. 2 M 



