must go."

"Excuse me," cries the Gospeler, turning back a moment; "but what's the
matter with your coat?"

The other discovers the condition of his tucked-up coat-tail with some
fierceness of aspect, but immediately explains that it must have been
caused by his sitting upon a folding-chair just before leaving home.

So, humming a savage tune in make-belief of no embarrassment at all in
regard to his recently disordered garment, Mr. BUMSTEAD reaches his
boarding-house. At the door he waits long enough to examine his
umbrella, with scowling scrutiny, in every rib; and then _he_ enters.

Behind the red window-curtain of the room of the dinner-party shines the
light all night, while before it a wailing December gale rises higher
and higher. Through leafless branches, under eaves and against chimneys,
the savage wings of the storm are beaten, its long fingers caught, and
its giant shoulder heaved. Still, while nothing else seems steady, that
light behind the red curtain burns unextinguished; the reason being that
the window is closed and the wind cannot get at it.

At morning comes a hush on nature; the sun arises with that innocent
expression of countenance which causes some persons to fancy that it
resembles Mr. GREELEY after shaving; and there is an evident desire on
the part of the wind to pretend that it has not been up all night.
Fallen chimnies, however, expose the airy fraud, and the clock blown
completely out of Saint Cow's steeple reveals what a high time there has
been.