The shades of evening were beginning to thicken, when Fydget stopped shiveringly and looked through the glass door of a fashionable hotel—the blazing fire and the numerous lights, by the force of contrast, made an outside seat still more uncomfortable. The gong pealed out that tea was ready, and the lodgers rushed from the stoves to comfort themselves with that exhilarating fluid. “There they go on first principles,” said Fydget Fyxington with a sigh. “Cla’ de kitchen da’,” said one of those ultra-aristocratic members of society, a negro waiter, as he bustled past the contemplative philosopher and entered the hotel; “you ought to be gwang home to suppa’, ole soul, if you got some—yaugh—waugh!” “Suppa’, you nigga’!” contemptuously responded Fydget, as the door closed, “I wish I was gwang home to suppa’, but suppers are a sort of thing I remember a good deal oftener than I see. Every thing is wrong—such a wandering from first principles!—there must be enough in this world for us all, or we wouldn’t be here; but things is fixed so badly that I s’pose some greedy rascal gets my share of suppa’ and other such elegant luxuries. It’s just the way of the world; there’s plenty of shares of everything, but somehow or other there are folks that lay their fingers on two or three shares, and sometimes more, according as they get a chance, and the real owners, like me, may go whistle. They’ve fixed it so that if you go back to first principles and try to bone what belongs to you, they pack you right off to jail, ’cause you can’t prove property. Empty stummicks and old clothes ain’t good evidence in court. “What the deuse is to become of me! Something must—and I wish it would be quick and hurra about it. My clothes are getting to be too much of the summer-house order for the winter fashions. People will soon see too much of me—not that I care much about looks myself, but boys is boys, and all boys is sassy. Since the weather’s been chilly, when I turn the corner to go up town, I feel as if the house had too many windows and doors, and I’m almost blow’d out of my coat and pants. The fact is, I don’t get enough to eat to serve for ballast.” After a melancholy pause, Fydget, seeing the coast tolerably clear, walked in to warm himself at the fire in the bar-room, near which he stood with great composure, at the same time emptying several glasses of comfortable compounds which had been left partly filled by the lodgers when they hurried to their tea. Lighting a cigar which he found half smoked upon the ledge of the stove, he seated himself and puffed away much at his ease. The inmates of the hotel began to return to the room, glancing suspiciously at Fydget’s tattered integuments, and drawing their chairs away from him as they sat down near the stove. Fydget looked unconscious, emitting volumes of smoke, and knocking off the ashes with a nonchalant and scientific air. “Bad weather,” said Brown.