"Ah! old men's boots don't go there, Sir," said the boot-maker to me one day, rather pointedly, pointing to the toes of the boots I had brought him for mending. As I danced home, writing another chronicle with every springing step, the remark filled me with reflection—such reflection, reader, as your mirror shows you when you gaze in it to rejoice in your own beauty.
Have you kept a diary for thirty years? Dear me! And have you kept your gas bills, your water-rates, your Christmas-cards, your writs, your circulars of summer sales? I might never have undertaken to write this biography if I had not chanced one evening—being unoccupied—to break open a private desk belonging to my friend Narcissus, and tearing open an envelope (sealed, and labelled "Compromising Postcards—to be opened before my death,") came across these old boot-bills, and been struck by the manner in which there lay revealed in them the story of the years over which they ran....
SCRAP II.—The Happy Home.
The first night we went to see George Donkeystir we heard in the kitchen a curious voice—suggestive somehow of the vine-leaves in the hair—singing "Ours is a Happy, Happy Home!" In the hall we saw none but a wee boy of four, standing on his head, balancing a billiard-cue on his chin.
"All done by kindness!" lisped the little chap. As we made an attempt to enter the dining-room, what should fall on our heads but a great wet sponge, backed by a ring of laughter from the hidden prompter, and George appeared, shouting "Bo!" followed by the loving wife, who helped to make the fun possible. What a time we had! From the moment we arrived (and fell over a string adroitly arranged by the dear little children across the little hall) to the moment that we had got into our little apple-pie beds, all was fun, frolic, merriment, and domestic joy. Just as we were falling asleep, tired out with a happy evening, we were disturbed by a chorus, as of waits, singing outside our room these beautiful words—
"O! Flo, what a change you know!
When he left the village he was shy,
But since he come into a little bit of splosh