P. S.--I have just got a note, saying that my back salary will not be paid. Shall sue the city, for I know that in the fighting business I did my duty as an M. P. according to police usage from time immemorial. What right has Mayor Wood to come in and upset ancient customs with his new-fangled notions? He may go to thunder. XXXIII. Damphool Defunct--Place of his Exile--Description thereof--and Exit. Sorrow is upon the heart, a heavy grief upon the soul, and a great affliction in the home of me, Doesticks. My friend, the charm of my chamber, the comforter of my lonely hours, the treasure of my heart, the light of my eyes, the sunshine of my existence, the borrower of my clean shirts and my Sunday pantaloons, the permanent clothing and fancy goods debtor of my life, is no more. My sack-cloth garment is not as yet complete, my tailor having disappointed me; but dust and ashes lie in alternate strata, undisturbed upon the head of me, Doesticks. Weep with me, sympathizing world; bear a helping hand to lift away this heavy load of sorrowful sorrow, of woeful woe, of bitter bitterness, of agonizing agony, of wretched wretchedness, and torturing torture, which now afflicts with its direful weight the head of me, Doesticks. I grieve, I mourn, I lament, I weep, I suffer, I pine, I droop, I sink, I despair, I writhe in agony, I feel bad. _Damphool_ has departed this life. He is buried, but he is not dead; he is entombed, but he is still alive. After a metropolitan existence of a few months had partially relieved him of his rural verdure; after having seen with appreciating eyes the suburbs of a town which alone contains the entire and undivided _elephant_, he has voluntarily exiled himself to a stagnant village in the Western wilderness--a sleepily-ambitious little townlet, vainly, for many years, aspiring to the dignity of cityhood, but which still remains a very baby of a city, not yet (metaphorically speaking) divested of those rudimentary triangular garments peculiar to weaklings in an undeveloped state--without energy enough to cry when it is hurt, or go-aheadism sufficient to keep its nose clean. A somnambulistic town--for in spite of all the efforts made for its glorification, it has obstinately refused to shake off its municipal drowsiness. A very Rip Van Winkle of a town, now in the midst of its twenty years' nap, and which will arouse some time and find itself so dilapidated that its former friends won't recognize it. A town which actualizes that ancient fable of the hare and tortoise--and, trusting in its capability of speed, has gone fast asleep at the beginning of the course, only to awake some future day to the fact that all its tortoise neighbors have passed it on the way, and it has been distanced in the race, rather than be disturbed in its comfortable snooze.