Folks will be curious about them that has wrote in the papers.  There’s my daughter couldn’t be easy no way till she’d got a profeel of one of them authors, to hang up right over the head of her bed.  That’s the gentleman that writes stories in the papers, some in the same way this gentleman did, I expect, that inquiries is made about.

I’m a poor woman, that tries to get an honest livin’, and works hard enough for it;—­lost my husband, and buried five children, and have two livin’ ones to support.  It’s a great loss to me, losin’ them two boarders; and if there’s anything in them papers he left in that desk that will fetch anything at any of the shops where they buy such things, I’m sure I wish you’d ask the printer to step round here and stop in and see what any of ’em is worth.  I’ll let you have one or two of ’em, and then you can see whether you don’t know anybody that would take the lot.  I suppose you’ll put what I tell you into shape, for, like as not, I sha’n’t write it out nor talk jest as folks that make books do.

This gentleman warn’t no great of a gentleman to look at.  Being of a very moderate dimension,—­five foot five he said, but five foot four more likely, and I’ve heerd him say he didn’t weigh much over a hundred and twenty pound.  He was light-complected rather than darksome, and was one of them smooth-faced people that keep their baird and wiskers cut close, jest as if they’d be very troublesome if they let ’em grow,—­instead of layin’ out their face in grass, as my poor husband that’s dead and gone used to say.  He was a well-behaved gentleman at table, only talked a good deal, and pretty loud sometimes, and had a way of turnin’ up his nose when he didn’t like what folks said, that one of my boarders, who is a very smart young man, said he couldn’t stand, no how, and used to make faces and poke fun at him whenever he see him do it.

He never said a word aginst any vittles that was set before him, but I mistrusted that he was more partickerlar in his eatin’ than he wanted folks to know of, for I’ve know’d him make believe to eat, and leave the vittles on his plate when he didn’t seem to fancy ’em; but he was very careful never to hurt my feelin’s, and I don’t belief he’d have spoke, if he had found a tadpole in a dish of chowder.  But nothin’ could hurry him when he was about his vittles.  Many’s the time I’ve seen that gentleman keepin’ two or three of ’em settin’ round the breakfast-table after the rest had swallered their meal, and the things was cleared off, and Bridget was a-waitin’ to get the cloth away,—­and there that little man would set, with a tumbler of sugar and water,—­what he used to call O Sukray, —­a-talkin’ and a-talkin’,—­and sometimes he would laugh, and sometimes the tears would come into his eyes,—­which was a kind of grayish blue eyes,—­and there he’d set and set, and my boy Benjamin Franklin hangin’ round and gettin’ late for school and wantin’ an excuse, and an old gentleman that’s one of