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THE MISERIES OF 

 A TENDER-EARED MAN. 



" I love to hear a brazen can-stick turned, 

 Or a dry wheel grate on its axle-tree." 



Shakskearb. (a little altered.) 



Patient Reader ! (reader hast thou patience?) I am a bachelor ! 

 A genuine, fate-stricken, friend-deserted, comfortless, middle-aged 

 bachelor, being in the prime of life, to wit, 64 years old. 



Would that what I have already said contained the full measure 

 of my woes ; but, alas ! the world chills me, its inhabitants frown 

 on me, and Nature verily loves to sport with me. Oh, the tale 

 that I could tell of sad and dispiriting vexations would paralyze 

 any one not endowed with nerves of brass, or a brain of iron, and 

 an indomitable vigour of mind, such as I in truth must possess. 

 Oil, how I hate the sing-song of words, the sad reiteration of 

 unpleasant noises, the barbarous torture of sounds which some 

 ■would fain persuade me were cheering to the ear; certainly they 

 have not, neither ever had they, any charms for me ; and, rather 

 than be doomed to listen to the perpetration of them, I would 

 yield up the least useful of my organs — or, in other words, the 

 exercise of my auricular powers. 



A few lamentable citations will suffice to give a tone of truth 

 to these well-founded complaints ; and, as a sample from a series, 

 I will merely recount two days of my last week's perplexities ; 

 and, after that, judge, candid reader, with sympathy. 



Last Sunday morning found me a boarder in the house of the 

 widow Trebletongue ; I having selected her apartments, as she 

 lived alone, and had no children, and, moreover, I was to be 

 favored with a private apartment, with the window, from the street, 

 facing, and within three feet of, a high stone wall; this I judged 

 would just suit me, as I should be sufficiently far removed from 

 the continued noise and din of a densely peopled thoroughfare. 

 I had entered on the previous evening. My landlady (poor soul; 

 contrived to interlard all her discourse with most lugubrious 

 mentionings of her dear, departed husband, God rest him ! While 

 serving up supper, she gave me such a specimen of her volur 

 bility that I determined, so far as in me lay, to avoid it altogether, 

 to which end I locked myself within my room during the Sun- 

 day, only leaving it at meal times, or occasionally to administer 

 consolation, with my riding whip, to a cat which spent the greater 

 part of the morning on the stairs, lamenting the hapless fate of 



