instant, a servant knocked, to say, that there was a gentleman below, "with a face as long me arrum, sir, who axed me was there a man here av the name av SIMPSON, Miss?"

"It is JOHN—it is Mr. BUMSTEAD!" shrieked FLORA, hastening involuntarily towards a mirror,—"and just see how my dress is wrinkled!"

"My name is BENTHAM—JEREMY BENTHAM," said a deep voice in the doorway; and there entered a gloomy figure, with smoky, light hair, a curiously long countenance, and black worsted gloves. "SIMPSON!—old OCTAVIUS!—did you never, never see me before?"

"If I am not greatly mistaken," returned the Gospeler, sternly. "I saw you standing in the bar-room of the hotel, just now, as we came up."

"Yes," sighed the stranger, "I was there—waiting for a Western friend—when you passed in. And has sorrow, then, so changed me, that you do not know me? Alas! alack! woe's me!"

"BENTHAM, you say?" cried the Ritualistic clergyman, with a start, and sudden change of countenance. "Surely you're not the rollicking fellow-student who saved my life at Yale?"

"I am! I am!" sobbed the other, smiting his bosom. "While studying theology, you'd gone to sleep in bed reading the Decameron. I, in the next room, suddenly smelt a smell of wood burning. Breaking into your apartment, I saw your candle fallen upon your pillow and your head on fire. Believing that, if neglected, the flames would spread to some vital part, I seized a water-pitcher and dashed the contents upon you. Up you instantly sprang, with a theological expression on your lips, and engaged me in violent single combat. "Madman!" roared I, "is it thus you treat one who has saved your life?" Falling upon the floor, with a black eye, you at once consented to be reconciled; and, from that hour forth, we were both members of the same secret society."

Leaping forward, the Reverend OCTAVIUS wrung both the black worsted gloves of Mr. BENTHAM, and introduced the latter to the old lawyer and his ward.

"He did indeed save all but my head from the conflagration, and extinguished that, even, before it was much charred," cried the grateful Ritualist, with marked emotion.—"But, JEREMY, why this aspect of depression?"

"OCTAVIUS, old friend," said BENTHAM, his hollow voice quivering, "let no man boast himself upon the gaiety of his youth, and fondly dream—poor self-deceiver!—that his maturity may be one of revelry. You know what I once was. Now I am conducting a first-class American Comic Paper."

Commiseration, earnest and unaffected, appeared upon every countenance, and Mr. DIBBLE was the first to break the ensuing deep silence.

"If I am not mistaken, then," observed the good lawyer, quietly, "the scene of your daily loss of spirits is in the same building with our young friend, Mr. PENDRAGON, whom you may know."

"I do know him, sir; and that his sister has lately come unto him. His room, by means of outside shutters, was once a refuge to me from the Man"—Here Mr. BENTHAM'S face flamed with inconceivable hatred—"who came to tell me just how an American first-class Comic Paper should be conducted."

"At what time does your rush of subscribers cease?"

"As soon as I begin to charge anything for my paper."

"And the newsmen, who take it by the week,—what is their usual time for swarming in your office?"

"On the day appointed for the return of unsold copies."

"Then I have an idea," said Mr. DIBBLE. "It appears to me, Mr. BENTHAM, that your office, besides being so near Mr. PENDRAGON'S quarters, furnishes all the conditions for a perfectly private confidential interview between this young lady here, and her friend, Miss PENDRAGON. Mr. SIMPSON, if you approve, be kind enough to acquaint Mr. BENTHAM with Miss POTTS'S history, without mentioning names; and explain to him, also, why the ladies' interview should take place in a spot whither that singular young man, Mr. BUMSTEAD, would not be likely to prowl, if in town, in his inspection of umbrellas."

The Gospeler hurriedly related the material points of FLORA'S history to his recovered friend, who moaned with all the more cheerful parts, and seemed to think that the serious ones might be worked-up in comic miss-spelling for his paper.—"For there is nothing more humorous in human life," said he, gloomily, "than the defective orthography of a fashionable young girl's education for the solemnity of matrimony."

Finally, they all set off for the appointed place of retirement, upon nearing which Mr. DIBBLE volunteered to remain outside as a guard against any possible interruption. The Gospeler led the way up the dark stairs of the building, when they had gained it; and the Flowerpot, following, on JEREMY BENTHAM'S arm, could not help glancing shyly up into the melancholy face of her escort, occasionally. "Do you never smile?" she could not help asking.

"Yes," he said, mournfully, "sometimes: when I clean my teeth."

No more was said; for they were entering the room of which the tone and atmosphere were those of a receiving-vault.

[1]     Shades of QUINTILIAN and Dr. JOHNSON, what a sentence!

[2]      Quite independently of any specific design to that end by the Adapter, this Adaptation, carefully following the original English narrative as it does, can not avoid acting as a kind of practical—and, of course, somewhat exaggerative—commentary upon what is strained, forced, or out of the line of average probabilities, in the work Adapted.

CHAPTER XXII.

A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS.

The principal office of the Comic Paper was one of those amazingly unsympathetic rooms in which the walls, windows and doors all have a stiff, unsalient aspect of the most hard-finished indifference to every emotion of humanity, and a perfectly rigid insensibility to the pleasures or pains of the tenants within their impassive shelter. In the whole configuration of the heartless, uncharacterized place there was not one gracious inequality to lean against; not a ledge to rest elbow upon; not a panel, not even a stove-pipe hole, to become dearly familiar to the wistful eye; not so much as a genial crack in the plastering, or a companionable rattle in a casement, or a little human obstinacy in a door to base some kind of an acquaintance upon and make one less lonely. Through the grim, untwinkling windows, gaping sullenly the wrong way with iron shutters, came a discouraged light, strained through the narrow intervals of the dusty roofs above, to discover a large coffin-colored desk surmounted by ghastly busts of HERVEY, KEBLE and BLAIR;^[3] a smaller desk, over which hung a picture of the Tomb of WASHINGTON, and at which sat a pallid assistant-editor in deep mourning, opening the comic contributions received by last mail; a still smaller desk, for the nominal writer of subscription-wrappers; files of the Evangelist, Observer and Christian Union hanging along the wall; a dead carpet of churchyard-green on the floor; and a print of Mr. PARKE GODWIN just above the mantel of momumental marble.

Upon finding themselves in this temple of Momus, and observing that its peculiar arrangement of sunshine made their complexions look as though they had been dead a few days, Gospeler SIMPSON and the Flowerpot involuntarily spoke in whispers behind their hands.

"Does that room belong to your establishment, also, BENTHAM?" whispered the Gospeler, pointing rather fearfully, as he spoke, towards a side-door leading apparently into an adjoining' apartment.

"Yes," was the low response.

"Is there—is there anybody dead in there?" whispered Mr. SIMPSON, tremulously.

"No.—Not yet"

"Then," whispered the Ritualistic clergyman, "you might step in there, Miss POTTS, and have your interview with Miss PENDRAGON, whom Mr. BENTHAM will, I am sure, cause to be summoned from up-stairs."

The assistant-editor of the Comic Paper stealing softly from the office to call the other young lady down, Mr. JEREMY BENTHAM made a sign that FLORA should follow him to the supplementary room indicated; his low-spirited manner being as though he had said: "If you wish to look at the body, miss, I will now show you the way."

Leaving the Gospeler lost in dark abstraction near the black mantel, the Flowerpot allowed the sexton of the establishment to conduct her funereally into the place assigned for her interview, and stopped aghast before a huge black object standing therein.

"What's this?" she gasped, almost hysterically.

"Only a safe," said Mr. BENTHAM, with inexplicable bitterness of tone. "Merely our fire-and-burglar-proof receptacle for the money constantly pouring in from first-class American Comic journalism."—Here Mr. BENTHAM slapped his forehead passionately, checked something like a sob in his throat, and abruptly returned to the main office.

Scarcely, however, had he closed the door of communication behind him, when another door, opening from the hall, was noiselessly unlatched, and MAGNOLIA PENDRAGON glided into the arms of her friend.

"FLORA!" murmured the Southern girl, "I can scarcely credit my eyes! It seems so long since we last met! You've been getting a new bonnet, I see."

"It's like an absurd dream!" responded the Flowerpot, wonderingly caressing her. "I've thought of you and your poor, ridiculous brother twenty times a day. How much you must have gone through here! Are they wearing skirts full, or scant, this season?"

"About medium, dear. But how do you happen to be here, in Mr. BENTHAM'S office?"

In answer to this question, FLORA related all that bad happened at Bumsteadville and since her flight from thence; concluding by warning MAGNOLIA, that her possession of a black alpaca waist, slightly worn, had subjected her to the ominous suspicion of the Ritualistic organist.

"I scorn and defy the suspicions of that enemy of the persecuted South, and high-handed wooer of exclusively Northern women!" exclaimed Miss PENDRAGON, vehemently. "Is this Mr. BENTHAM married?"

"I suppose not."

"Is he visiting any one?"

"I shouldn't think so, dear."

"Then," added MAGNOLIA, thoughtfully, "if dear Mr. DIBBLE approves, he might be a friend to MONTGOMERY and myself; and, by being so near us, protect us both from Mr. BUMSTEAD. Just think, dear FLORA, what heaps of sorrow I should endure, if that base man's suspicion about my alpaca waist should be only a pretence, to frighten me into ultimately receiving his addresses."

"I don't think there's any danger, love," said Miss POTTS, rather sharply.

"Why, FLORA precious?"

"Oh, because he's so absurdly fastidious, you know, about regularity of features in women."

"More than he is about brains, I should think, dear, from what you tell me of his making love to you."

Here both young ladies trembled very much, and said they never, never would have believed it of each other; and were only reconciled when FLORA sobbed that she was a poor unmarried orphan, and Miss PENDRAGON moaned piteously that an unwedded Southern girl without money had better go away somewhere in the desert, with her crushed brother, and die at once for their down-trodden section. Then, indeed, they embraced tearfully; and, in proof of the perfect restoration of their devoted friendship, agreed never to marry if they could avoid it, and told each other the prices of all their best clothes.

"You won't tell your brother that I've been here?" said the Flowerpot. "I'm so absurdly afraid that he can't help blaming me for causing some of his trouble."

"Can't I tell him, even if it would serve to amuse him in his desolation?" asked the sister, persuasively. "I want to see him smile again, just as he does some days when a hand-organ-man's monkey climbs up to our windows from the street."

"Well, you may tell him, then, you absurd thing!" returned FLORA, blushing; and, with another embrace, they parted, and the deeply momentous interview was over.

(To be Continued.)

[3]      Author of "The Grave."

OFFICE SEEKING.^[4]

BY ICHABOD BOGGS,

THE NEW AMERICAN POET.

PREFATORY NOTE.—The reader is requested to judge the following production mildly, as it is the first effort of a youthful genius (16 years old in looks and feeling, 42 by the family bible and census.) The author has felt that America should have a new kind of verse of its own, and he thinks he here offers one which has never been used by any other mortal poet. It is called the duodekameter. Perhaps it may be proper to add that the following is poetry.

I.

II.

III.

IV.