Come, now,—­he said,—­what’s the use of these comparisons?  Did n’t I hear this gentleman saying, the other day, that every American owns all America?  If you have really got more brains in Boston than other folks, as you seem to think, who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling fools?  If I like Broadway better than Washington Street, what then?  I own them both, as much as anybody owns either.  I am an American,—­and wherever I look up and see the stars and stripes overhead, that is home to me!

He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling over him in the breeze.  We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should see the national flag by so doing.  The sight of the dingy ceiling and the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion.

Bravo! bravo!—­said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the table.—­Those are the sentiments of Washington’s Farewell Address.  Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations.  Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon.  Why don’t they now?  Why don’t they now?  I saw enough of hating each other in the old Federal times; now let’s love each other, I say,—­let’s love each other, and not try to make it out that there is n’t any place fit to live in except the one we happen to be born in.

It dwarfs the mind, I think,—­said I,—­to feed it on any localism.  The full stature of manhood is shrivelled—­

The color burst up into my cheeks.  What was I saying,—­I, who would not for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?

I will go,—­he said,—­and made a movement with his left arm to let himself down from his high chair.

No,—­no,—­he does n’t mean it,—­you must not go,—­said a kind voice next him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.

Iris, my dear!—­exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very little flavor of grace.

She did not move for this address, and there was a tableau that lasted some seconds.  For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood, and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with Nature’s insults, looked straight into each other’s eyes.

Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life.  Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached into her soul as these did.  It was not that they were in themselves supernaturally bright,—­but there was the sad fire in them that flames up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope, but, alas! not without emotion.  To him it seemed as if those amber gates had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain brook, and through them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers to ring with melody.