There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on the part of the boarders generally so far as he is concerned.  This is doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his look of late.  Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some hidden disease is at work upon him.

—­What ’s the matter with Little Boston?—­said the young man John to me one day.—­There a’n’t much of him, anyhow; but ’t seems to me he looks peakeder than ever.  The old woman says he’s in a bad way, ‘n’ wants a puss to take care of him.  Them pusses that take care of old rich folks marry ’em sometimes,—­’n’ they don’t commonly live a great while after that.  No, Sir!  I don’t see what he wants to die for, after he’s taken so much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body of his.  I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, ‘n’ how it’s goin’ to get out.  What business has he to die, I should like to know?  Let Ma’am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and be (this is a family-magazine); but we a’n’t goin’ to have him dyin’.  Not by a great sight.  Can’t do without him anyhow.  A’n’t it fun to hear him blow off his steam?

I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the Little Gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a better world.

—­In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss Iris.  There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps belong to her artist nature.  For, you see, the one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone.  A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp, well-defined mental physiognomy.  Besides this, many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy.  Even in physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity.  One of these young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,—­an ugly height to get up, and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen.  Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows’ nests,—­and crows generally know about how far boys can “shin up,” and set their household establishments above that high-water mark.  Still another of these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island.  She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out for.