This will give you some idea of the kind of man we had on our hands; and I won’t risk making myself as great a bore as he is, by attempting a history of his stay with us; for I remember I set out to tell you about my little Iron-Clad.  I’m coming to that.

Suffice it to say, he stayed—­he stayed—­he STAYED!—­five mortal weeks; refusing to take hints when they almost became kicks; driving our friends from us, and ourselves almost to distraction; his misfortunes alone protecting him from a prompt and vigorous elimination:  when a happy chance helped me to a solution of this awful problem of destiny.

More than once I had recalled Harry’s vivacious suggestion of the scarecrow—­if one could only have been invented that would sit composedly in a chair and nod when spoken to!  I was wishing for some such automaton, to bear the brunt of the boring with which we were afflicted, when one day there came a little man into the garden, where I had taken refuge.

He was a short, swarthy, foreign-looking, diminutive, stiff, rather comical fellow,—­little figure mostly head, little head mostly face, little face mostly nose, which was by no means little—­a sort of human vegetable (to my horticultural eye) running marvellously to seed in that organ.  The first thing I saw, on looking up at the sound of footsteps, was the said nose coming toward me, among the sweet-corn tassels.  Nose of a decidedly Hebraic cast,—­the bearer respectably dressed, though his linen had an unwholesome sallowness, and his cloth a shiny, much-brushed, second-hand appearance.

Without a word he walks up to me, bows solemnly, and pulls from his pocket (I thought he was laying his hand on his heart) the familiar, much-worn weapon of his class,—­the folded, torn yellow paper, ready to fall to pieces as you open it,—­in short, the respectable beggar’s certificate of character.  With another bow (which gave his nose the aspect of the beak of a bird of prey making a pick at me) he handed the document.  I found that it was dated in Milwaukee, and signed by the mayor of that city, two physicians, three clergymen, and an editor, who bore united testimony to the fact that Jacob Menzel—­I think that was his name—­the bearer, any way,—­was a deaf mute, and, considering that fact, a prodigy of learning, being master of no less than five different languages (a pathetic circumstance, considering that he was unable to speak one); moreover, that he was a converted Jew; and, furthermore, a native of Germany, who had come to this country in company with two brothers, both of whom had died of cholera in St. Louis in one day; in consequence of which affliction, and his recent conversion, he was now anxious to return to Fatherland, where he proposed to devote his life to the conversion of his brethren;—­the upshot of all which was that good Christians and charitable souls everywhere were earnestly recommended to aid the said Jacob Menzel in his pious undertaking.