—­Were you born in Boston, Sir?—­said the little man,—­looking eager and excited.

I was not,—­I replied.

It’s a pity,—­it’s a pity,—­said the little man;—­it ’s the place to be born in.  But if you can’t fix it so as to be born here, you can come and live here.  Old Ben Franklin, the father of American science and the American Union, was n’t ashamed to be born here.  Jim Otis, the father of American Independence, bothered about in the Cape Cod marshes awhile, but he came to Boston as soon as he got big enough.  Joe Warren, the first bloody ruffed-shirt of the Revolution, was as good as born here.  Parson Charming strolled along this way from Newport, and stayed here.  Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn’t come, too;—­we’d have made a man of him,—­poor, dear, good old Christian heathen!  There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby, in the old burying-ground!  I’ve stood on the slab many a time.  Meant well,—­meant well.  Juggernaut.  Parson Charming put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down.  T’ other fellow’s at work now, but he makes more noise about it.  When the linchpin comes out on his side, there’ll be a jerk, I tell you!  Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt.  Hope not,—­hope not.  But this is the great Macadamizing place,—­always cracking up something.

Cracking up Boston folks,—­said the gentleman with the diamond-pin, whom, for convenience’ sake, I shall hereafter call the Koh-i-noor.

The little man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel’s Turk used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by cogwheels.—­Cracking up all sorts of things,—­native and foreign vermin included,—­said the little man.

This remark was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal application, and to afford a fair opening for a lively rejoinder, if the Koh-i-noor had been so disposed.  The little man uttered it with the distinct wooden calmness with which the ingenious Turk used to exclaim, E-chec! so that it must have been heard.  The party supposed to be interested in the remark was, however, carrying a large knife-bladeful of something to his mouth just then, which, no doubt, interfered with the reply he would have made.

—­My friend who used to board here was accustomed sometimes, in a pleasant way, to call himself the Autocrat of the table,—­meaning, I suppose, that he had it all his own way among the boarders.  I think our small boarder here is like to prove a refractory subject, if I undertake to use the sceptre my friend meant to bequeath me, too magisterially.  I won’t deny that sometimes, on rare occasions, when I have been in company with gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified.  But I maintain, that I, the Professor, am a good listener.