Inspired to an extraordinary flow of malignant animal spirits by the complexities of travel incident to the odorous mazes of some hundred odd kegs of salt mackerel and boxes of brown soap impressively stacked before one very enterprising Commission house, Mr. Bentham lightened the journey with anecdotes of self-made Commission men who had risen in life by breaking human legs and city ordinances; and dwelt emotionally upon the scenes in the city hospitals where ladies and gentlemen were brought in, with nails from the hoops of sugar-hogsheads sticking into their feet, or limbs dislocated from too-loftily piled firkins of butter falling upon them.  Through incredible hardships, and amongst astounding complications of horse-cars, target companies, and barrels of everything, Mr. Bentham also amused his friends with circuits of several of the fine public markets of New York; explaining to them the relations of the various miasmatic smells of those quaint edifices with the various devastating diseases of the day, and expatiating quite eloquently upon the political corruption involved in the renting of the stalls, and the fine openings there were for Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Fish and Vegetable departments.  Then, as a last treat, he led his panting companions through several lively up-hill blocks of drug-mills and tobacco firms, to where they had a distant view of a tenement house next door to a kerosene factory, where, as he vivaciously told them, in the event of a fire, at least one hundred human beings would be slowly done to a turn.  After which all three returned from their walk, firmly convinced that an unctuous vein of humor had been conscientiously worked, and abstractedly wishing themselves dead.[1]

The exhilarating effect of the genial Comic Paper man upon Flora did not, indeed, pass away, until she and Miss CAROWTHERS were in their appointed quarters under the roof of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, whither they went immediately upon the arrival of the elder spinster from Bumsteadville.

“It could have been wished, my good woman,” said Miss CAROWTHERS, casting a rather disparaging look around the death-chamber of the late Mr. SKAMMERHORN, “that you had assigned to educated single young ladies, like ourselves, an apartment less suggestive of Man in his wedded aspects.  The spectacle of a pair of pegged boots sticking out from under a bed, and a razor and a hone grouped on the mantle-shelf, is not such as I should desire to encourage in the dormitory of a pupil under my tuition.”

“That’s much to be deplored, I’m sure, CAROWTHERS,” returned Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, severely, “and sorry am I that I ever married, on that particular account.  I’d not have done it, if you’d only told me.  But, seeing that I married SKAMMERHORN, and then he died delirious, his boots and razor must remain, just as he often wished to throw the former at me in his ravings.  Once married is enough, say I; and those who never were, through having no proposals, must bear with those who have, and take things as they come.”