“What text was it?” I asked.

But he was almost asleep, and his wife signalled me not to wake him.  So I was stealing away toward the door, when he opened his eyes and murmured, drowsily: 

“De tex’, oh yes, seh.  I fo’got—­’twas a Scripcheh tex’—­’Be thou faithful unto—­’”

He then turned over, settling himself comfortably in his pillows, and in a moment dropped asleep.

In due course of time, he made his appearance in the office again, being anxious to “resume his duties,” he said.  But that blow on the head has proved to be a serious affair, affecting the old man’s memory permanently, and giving a violent shock to his system, from which it will never entirely recover.  He is no longer the clear-headed messenger he was, when he was wont to assert—­no idle boast either—­that he could “fetch an’ cai’ eq’il to any man.”  Now and then, in these latter days, he confuses things a little, always suffering the keenest mortification when he discovers his mistakes.  As I said in the beginning, he is still our office-boy and messenger, although a smart young mulatto is hired to come betimes, make things tidy, and leave before the old man gets down, so his feelings mayn’t be hurt.  He sometimes remarks on our being the “cleanis’ gentlemun in de wueld,” but we contrive that no whisper of the real state of the case ever reaches his ear, and he is allowed to sweep and dust a little to satisfy his mind.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  A virtuous woman.]

THE HEARTBREAK CAMEO.

By LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY.

“It is a cameo to break one’s heart!” said Mrs. Dalliba, as she toyed with the superb jewel.  “The cutting is unmistakably Florentine, and yet you have placed it among your Indian curiosities.  I do not understand it at all.”

Mrs. Dalliba was a connoisseur in gems; she had travelled from one extremity of Europe to the other; had studied the crown jewels of nearly every civilized nation, haunted museums, and was such a frequent visitor at the jewellers’ of the Palais Royal, that many of them had come to regard her as an individual who might harbor burglarious intentions.  She was a very harmless specialist, however, who, though she loved these stars of the underworld better than any human being, could never have been tempted to make one of them unfairly her own, and she seldom purchased, for she never coveted one unless it was something quite extraordinary, beyond the reach of even her considerable fortune.  Meanwhile few of the larger jewelry houses had in their employ lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba.  She pursued her studies for the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics, cameos, and intaglios.  And yet the Crevecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser heads than Mrs. Dalliba’s, adept though she was.  It was cut from a solid heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure