Funny Big Socks / Being the Fifth Book of the Series

DR. MUMBUDGET'S DOOR-PLATE.
BEING
BY
THE AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE WHITE ANGEL. NEW YORK: LEAVITT & ALLEN, 21 & 23 MERCER ST. 1863.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by S. L. BARROW, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. JOHN F. TROW, Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 50 Greene Street, New York.
TO THAT GENIAL GOOD MAN AND PROFOUND PHILOSOPHER, THE REV. DR. S. I. PRIME, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.

How it did rain, to be sure! Up the long street, and down the long street nothing was to be seen but large mud puddles, while the gutter ran like a little river, and gushed with a loud sound into the sewer mouth.
That was a rain indeed! but in the warm rooms it was comfortable enough. Books and pretty pictures lined the walls on all sides but one, where the large window was, the recess filled with blooming flowers; they smelt so sweetly!
There, at a table that was covered with a green cloth, sat a literary man. His head was bowed upon his arms; and when he raised his face, one saw that he was so sad and pale! The poor literary man was quite unhappy.
If one could have crept into his heart (like him who owned the Galoshes of Fortune ), one would have seen that his thoughts ran, Ah me! how unhappy I am. I write books about the good and the beautiful, but nobody buys them; no one cares to read of such things. If I could but tell them a tale, now, something lively or pathetic, like the poet Baggesen or our own Hoffman, that they all like. Nay, then, what a weary life it is! and he leaned back in his arm chair, and closed his eyes.
Suddenly, something came hissing down the chimney into the stove. It was two or three rain drops driven in by the wind. Something else appeared to have entered with them, for there was a rustle and breeze in the chamber, and then the literary man heard a whisper quite close to his ear.