“ ‘No, sir, I do not,’ I replied, looking very earnestly into his eye.
“ ‘Nor in there, either?’ said he, pulling open his other eye.
“ ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ I replied, after a minute examination.
“ ‘I guess not!’ said Mr. Lummocks; and without making any other answer, he turned on his heel and left me.
“ ‘Regularly sucked, eh, Jack?’ asked a young man who had been listening to our conversation.
“ ‘Don't mention it!’ said Mr. Lummocks; ‘the man is a fool.’ ”
Our friend was about to demand an explanation of this strange conduct, when the proprietor came forward and told him that he was not a retailer but a jobber, and advised him, “if he wanted a vest-pattern, to go into Chatham-street!”
He must have been a good deal of an observer, and something of a philosopher also, who wrote as follows, in a unique paper, some fifteen years ago:
“Man is never contented. He is the fretful baby of trouble and care, and he will continue to worry and fret, no matter how pretty are the playthings that are laid before him to please him. He will sometimes fret because he can find nothing to fret about. I've known just such men myself. If he were bound to live in this world forever, he would fret because he couldn't leave and go to another, ‘just for a change;’ and now, seeing that sooner or later he must go, and no mistake, he frets like a caged porcupine, and thinks he would like to live here always. The fact is, he don't know what he wants.