One curious circumstance happened lately which I mention without drawing an absolute inference.  Being at the studio of a sculptor with whom I am acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of a left arm.  On my asking where the model came from, he said it was taken direct from the arm of a deformed person, who had employed one of the Italian moulders to make the cast.  It was a curious case, it should seem, of one beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly imperfect—­I have repeatedly noticed this little gentleman’s use of his left arm.  Can he have furnished the model I saw at the sculptor’s?

—­So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow.  I hope there will be something pretty and pleasing about her.  A woman with a creamy voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the boarding-house,—­a little more marrow and a little less sinew than our landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of whom are of the turkey-drumstick style of organization.  I don’t mean that these are our only female companions; but the rest being conversational non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in their food as locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither away from the table like blossoms that never came to fruit, I have not yet referred to them as individuals.

I wonder what kind of young person we shall see in that empty chair to-morrow!

—­I read this song to the boarders after breakfast the other morning.  It was written for our fellows;—­you know who they are, of course.

The boys.

     Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 
     If there has, take him out, without making a noise! 
     Hang the Almanac’s cheat and the Catalogue’s spite! 
     Old Time is a liar!  We’re twenty to-night!

     We’re twenty!  We’re twenty!  Who says we are more? 
     He’s tipsy,—­young jackanapes!—­show him the door! 
     —­“Gray temples at twenty?”—­Yes! white, if we please;
     Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there’s nothing can freeze!

     Was it snowing I spoke of?  Excuse the mistake! 
     Look close,—­you will see not a sign of a flake;
     We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
     And these are white roses in place of the red!

     We’ve a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told. 
     Of talking (in public) as if we were old;
     That boy we call Doctor, (1) and this we call Judge (2)
     —­It’s a neat little fiction,—­of course it’s all fudge.

     That fellow’s the Speaker, (3)—­the one on the right;
     Mr. Mayor, (4) my young one, how are you to-night? 
     That’s our “Member of Congress,"(5) we say when we chaff;
     There’s the “Reverend” (6) What’s his name?—­don’t make me laugh!

     That boy with the grave mathematical look(7)
     Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
     And the royal society thought it was true! 
     So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too.