within its hospitable walls. In fact, we only arrived late at night, and
departed early the next morning; but even a six-hours' sojourn gave me a
solemn and "realizing sense" of its marked worth,--for, when, tired and
listless, I asked for a servant to assist me, the waiter said he would
send the housekeeper. Accordingly, when, a few moments after, it knocked
at the door with light, light finger, (See De la Motte Fouquè,) I drawled,
"Come in," and the Queen of Sheba stood before me, clad in purple and fine
linen, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. I stared in
dismay, and perceived myself rapidly transmigrating into a _ridiculus
mus_. My gray and dingy travelling-dress grew abject, and burned into my
soul like the tunic of Nessus. I should as soon have thought of asking
Queen Victoria to brush out my hair as that fine lady in brocade silk and
Mechlin lace. But she was good and gracious, and did not annihilate me on
the spot, as she might easily have done, for which I shall thank her as
long as I live.

"You sent for me?" she inquired, with the blandest accents imaginable. I
can't tell a lie, pa,--you know I can't tell a lie; besides, I had not
time to make up one, and I said, "Yes," and then, of all stupid devices
that could filter into my soggy brain, I must needs stammer out that I
should like a few matches! A pretty thing to bring a dowager duchess up
nine pairs of stairs for!

"I will ring the bell," she said, with a tender, reproachful sweetness and
dignity, which conveyed without unkindness the severest rebuke tempered by
womanly pity, and proceeded to instruct me in the nature and uses of the
bell-rope, as she would any little dairy-maid who had heard only the chime
of cow-bells all the days of her life. Then she sailed out of the room,
serene and majestic, like a seventy-four man-of-war, while I, a squalid,
salt-hay gundalow, (Venetian blind-ed into _gondola_,) first sank down in