Mine was not a very cheerful or attractive room, certainly; but I should soon be used to it, I reflected, and it would seem nice enough. Then I drew up the shades, and looked out with much interest upon my first daylight-view of the great metropolis. Certainly, the wrong side of city houses is no more advantageous a view of them than is the wrong side of other fabrics; and in proportion as the velvet is rich and gorgeous, so is the reverse dull and plain. My room being in the rear of the house, I of course had the benefit of the wrong side of the neighboring houses; which, I will do them the justice to say, were as dismal and unpretending as houses need be. They had all of them, with one consent, put their best foot foremost; the gorgeous foot presented to the street, was of brown stone, plate glass, and carving; the slip-shod foot left in the background, was dingy for want of paint, unsightly with clothes-lines and ash-barrels, neglected and forlorn. However, I thought cheerfully, some strange comfort attends even so exalted a state as "two pair back;" there was an unlimited view of the sky, much greater than the lower rooms could command. Indeed, when there was anything but lead-color overhead, I concluded that these windows must be very cheerful. The spire of a church, however, not far off (which, I was happy to observe, had no wrong side), was the one grace of the prospect. It would not do to think of the way in which the mists were rolling up from the lake, this grey, hazy morning, nor how the pines on its bank were reflected in its still surface; nor, indeed, at all of the scene, bold and picturesque even in its wintry desolation, that had met my waking vision for the last few happy weeks.