But, to return to my window at the back of the hotel.  Together with a due contemplation of the fruit-trees, the grapevines, the buttonwood-tree, the cat, the birds, and many other particulars, I failed not to study the row of fashionable dwellings to which all these appertained.  Here, it must be confessed, there was a general sameness.  From the upper story to the first floor, they were so much alike, that I could only conceive of the inhabitants as cut out on one identical pattern, like little wooden toy-people of German manufacture.  One long, united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in the rain, extended over the whole.  After the distinctness of separate characters to which I had recently been accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me not to be able to resolve this combination of human interests into well-defined elements.  It seemed hardly worth while for more than one of those families to be in existence, since they all had the same glimpse of the sky, all looked into the same area, all received just their equal share of sunshine through the front windows, and all listened to precisely the same noises of the street on which they boarded.  Men are so much alike in their nature, that they grow intolerable unless varied by their circumstances.

Just about this time a waiter entered my room.  The truth was, I had rung the bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler.

“Can you tell me,” I inquired, “what families reside in any of those houses opposite?”

“The one right opposite is a rather stylish boarding-house,” said the waiter.  “Two of the gentlemen boarders keep horses at the stable of our establishment.  They do things in very good style, sir, the people that live there.”

I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on examining the house a little more closely, in one of the upper chambers I saw a young man in a dressing-gown, standing before the glass and brushing his hair for a quarter of an hour together.  He then spent an equal space of time in the elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made his appearance in a dress-coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the tailor’s, and now first put on for a dinner-party.  At a window of the next story below, two children, prettily dressed, were looking out.  By and by a middle-aged gentleman came softly behind them, kissed the little girl, and playfully pulled the little boy’s ear.  It was a papa, no doubt, just come in from his counting-room or office; and anon appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he had stolen behind the children, and laying her hand on his shoulder to surprise him.  Then followed a kiss between papa and mamma; but a noiseless one, for the children did not turn their heads.

“I bless God for these good folks!” thought I to myself.  “I have not seen a prettier bit of nature, in all my summer in the country, than they have shown me here, in a rather stylish boarding-house.  I will pay them a little more attention by and by.”