One day as I was walking along the streets, I thought I might as well purchase some French books, of which I had only one with me, in order that I might not quite forget my own language. I entered therefore a great bookseller’s shop—dingy and dull enough it was, in all conscience—and asked for one or two works which I named. Although it may seem to have no connection with this part of my history, yet I must say something of my personal appearance at this time, as I am convinced it had some effect upon the events that followed. I was now within quarter of an inch of six feet high, robust in frame, from much exercise, tanned almost a mahogany color by exposure to the sea air, and with a moustache long and thick for my age. My hair had been suffered to grow very long, and floated wildly in its unshorn curls, and I was dressed in deep and new mourning of a foreign cut. Thus in the streets of Boston, I had something at least to distinguish me from the citizens of the place, where no one wore moustaches at all, and most of them had their hair still thickly powdered, and tied in queue, while those who had not, wore it as closely cut as the ears of a terrier dog. In asking for the books, I spoke in a grave, and perhaps somewhat abrupt manner; for the death of my poor Louise, had left upon me a sort of carelessness of men’s opinions, and a lack of the desire to please, which is rare in youth. The shopman answered at once in a somewhat flippant manner that he guessed they had none of them; and I replied in the same cold and imperative tone in which I had first spoken, that I would trouble him to do something more than guess—to make sure; whether the books were there or not, and if not, whether they could be procured for me. “I reckon you are from the old country,” said the man, with the most good humored impertinence. “That is nothing to you, my friend,” I replied. “We will reckon when I have got the books.” “Then I calculate you had better speak to our boss,” said the shopman. “A very good calculation,” I replied, “if you mean your master.” “I h’aint got a master,” rejoined the man, with a look of considerable indignation. “Well then,” I said, “let me speak with any one who supplies the place of a master, and who is master at all events of the shop, if he is not of the shopman.” “I think you might have called it store, stranger,” said my friend; but as by this time I had taken up a book from the counter and begun to read, he went away to call his “boss,” as he termed him.