Wal, think sez I, "what on arth _does_ this mean? I haint seen a door yard fence nor a post since I come to York, but this ere etarnal name was stuck up on it, and now I'll be choked if it haint chased me up here into the tip top of the Astor House." As I was a thinking of this, I kinder turned the paper in my hand, and there on t'other side was a heap of the purtyest leetle finefied writing that I ever did see. It was as plain as print, and as fine as a spider's web, but I couldn't make out a word of it to save my life. I never was so flustrated in my born days, but arter thinking on it a jiffy, I seemed to understand it, and was sartin that somebody had writ a new fangled sort of a letter to Fanny Ellsler, and had sent it to my room instead of her'n. I run out into the entry way and hollered "hellow" to the chap like all natur, but he'd made himself scarce, and so I went back agin. I swanny, if I knew how to fix it. I didn't want the pesky critter's letter, and then agin, I didn't much want to go and carry it to her, for fear she'd take me for one of them long-haired, lantern-jawed coots that hanker round sich foreign she critters, like lean dogs a huntin around a bone. But then agin I raly had a sort of a sneaking notion to see her, if I could as well as not. So I up and went to the looking glass and gin my hair a slick or two, and took, a sort of gineral survey, to be sartin that I was according to gunter. There wasn't no mistake in that chap, I can tell you. Everything was smooth as amber-grease, and my hair was so shiney and slick that a fly would a slipped up if he'd ventured to settle on it. I ony jest pulled the corner of my new handkercher out of my coat pocket a trifle, then I put my hat on with a genteel tip upwards, and down I went, chomping a handful of peppermint drops as I went along in case my breath hadn't quite got over the smell of fried onions that Captin Doolittle gin me for breakfast aboard the sloop. "Look a here," sez I to a chap that I cum across in one of the entryways as I was a trying to circumnavigate down stairs, "you don't know where abouts Miss Elssler lives, now du you?" "Yes," sez he, a stopping short, "she has the large parlor in front, jest over the great entrance on the second floor." "What! she don't live here in the Astor House, does she?" sez I, "Sartinly," sez he. "You don't say so," sez I. "Yes I _do_ say so," sez he, a larfin. "Wal, now I cum to think on it I guess you du," sez I; "but I say now, you hadn't jest as livs as not go and show me the door, had you?" "Oh, I haint no particular objections," sez he, and with that he begun twistifying down stairs and around and across, and I arter him like the tail to a kite, till by-am-by he hauled up close to a room door, and arter saying, "this is the room," and giving a bow, cut off before I'd time to ask him how his marm was. Your affectionate son,