368 SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



monstrating against it as being something out of the usual 

 way, and that he was used to being treated as if he was half 

 white. Much experimenting on the cookery of the various 

 households he had invaded had made him quite a connoisseur 

 in victuals. He knew the proper time to turn up his nose at 

 a cup of coffee, and he was aware when " tramp butter " was 

 placed before him. He mildly remonstrated against this 

 oleaginous compound — an article we generally keep on hand 

 in cases of emergency, much as your tobacco-beggar's victim 

 keeps an inferior article of " plug " for his many friends. It 

 was buckwheat cake season, and he showed much discrimina- 

 tion in feasting on those luxuries. These grew " sicklied o'er 

 with a pale cast " during the progress of the meal, when our 

 guest intimated to my wife (who, of course, is the cake-baker, 

 Bridget disliking the business on account of the cold cakes 

 falling to the follower of that profession) that he believed he 

 was done ; but his appetite returned, however, when the 

 proper golden-brown hue was again attained, when, like 

 Oliver the hungry, he asked for more. After closing up the 

 store and returning to the house, I found the vexed question 

 of how our boarder was to be lodged for the night still upper- 

 most in the female mind, and unsettled. Objections being 

 made to any more luxurious mode for his passing the noc- 

 turnal hours, he was sentenced to sleep on the sitting-room 

 floor, from which there was no respite. A horse blanket and 

 rocking-chair cushion were the comforts assigned him, after 

 which we retired; I with an undiminished confidence in 

 human nature ; my wife full of dark forebodings of robbery and 

 perhaps assassination, and Bridget with a full determination 

 of packing up and going to her "cousin's" in Lambertville 

 the next morning. As to how we spent the time until morn- 

 ing, each of us could have said with him of Gloucester, " Oh ! 

 I have passed a miserable night." If let alone I would have 

 slept the sleep of the just; but every half hour Mrs. Smith 



