achievements never went so far as concrete capuality, but stopped short in the later stages of abstract idealism. However, prejudice is stronger than truth; and, as I said, every fragment of every fabric that could not give an account of itself was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dish-cloth or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I did not that from the combined fineness and strength of their material they might answer the purpose, even if in form they should not be everything that was desirable,—and I determined to ascertain, if possible, whether such things existed anywhere out of poetry.

As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping was not everyday trading. It was to mark the abandonment of an old and the inauguration of a new line of policy. Thus it was with no ordinary interest that I looked carefully at all the shops, and when I found one that seemed to hold out a possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed the hint which I pricked into him with the point of my parasol, and stopped outside. The one place in the world where a man has no business to be is the inside of a dry-goods shop. He never looks and never is so big and bungling as there. A woman skips from silk to muslin, from muslin to ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths, with the grace and agility of a bird. She glides in and out among crowds of her sex, steers sweepingly clear of all obstacles, and emerges triumphant. A man enters, and immediately becomes all boots and elbows. He needs as much room to turn round in as the English iron-clad Warrior, and it takes him about as long. He treads on all the flounces, runs against all the clerks, knocks over all the children, and is generally underfoot. If he gets an idea into his head, a Nims's battery cannot dislodge it. You thought of buying a shawl; but a thousand considerations, in the shape of raglans, cloaks, talmas, and pea-jackets, induce you to modify your views. He stands by you. He hears all your inquiries and all the clerk's suggestions. The whole process of your reasoning is visible to his naked eye. He sees the sack or visite or cape put upon your shoulders and you walking off in it, and when you are half-way home, he will mutter, in stupid amazement, "I thought you were going to buy a shawl!" It is enough to drive one wild.

No! Halicarnassus is absurd and mulish in many things, but he knows I will not be hampered with him when I am shopping, and he obeys the smallest hint, and stops outside.

To be sure he puts my temper on the rack by standing with his hands in his pockets, or by looking meek, or likely as not peering into the shop-door after me with great staring eyes and parted lips; and this is the most provoking of all. If there is anything vulgar, slipshod, and shiftless, it is a man lounging about with his hands in his pockets. If you have paws, stow them away; but if you are endowed with hands, learn to carry them properly, or else cut them off. Nor can I abide a man's looking as if he were under control. I wish him to BE submissive, but I don't wish him to LOOK so. He shall do just as he is bidden, but he shall carry himself like the man and monarch he was made to be. Let him stay where he is put, yet not as if he were put there, but as if he had taken his position deliberately. But, of all things, to have a man act as if he were a clod just emerged for the first time from his own barnyard! Upon this occasion, however, I was too much absorbed in my errand to note anybody's demeanor, and I threaded straightway the crowd of customers, went up to the counter, and inquired in a clear voice,—

"Have you lace nightcaps?"

The clerk looked at me with a troubled, bewildered glance, and made no reply. I supposed he had not understood me, and repeated the question. Then he answered, dubiously,—

"We have breakfast-caps."

It was my turn to look bewildered. What had I to do with breakfast-caps? What connection was there between my question and his answer? What field was there for any further inquiry? "Have you ox-bows?" imagine a farmer to ask. "We have rainbows," says the shopman. "Have you cameo-pins?" inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins. "We have linchpins." "Have you young apple trees?" asks the nursery-man. "We have whiffletrees." If I had wanted breakfast-caps, shouldn't I have asked for breakfast-caps? Or do the Boston people take their breakfast at one o'clock in the morning? I concluded that the man was demented, and marched out of the shop. When I laid the matter before Halicarnassus, the following interesting colloquy took place.

I. "What do you suppose it meant?"

H. "He took you for a North American Indian."

I. "What do you mean?"

H. "He did not understand your patois."

I. "What patois?"

H. "Your squaw dialect. You should have asked for a bonnet de nuit."

I. "Why?"

H. "People never talk about nightcaps in good society."

I. "Oh!"

I was very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was tired; so he went into a restaurant and ordered strawberries,—that luscious fruit, quivering on the border-land of ambrosia and nectar.

"Doubtless," says honest, quaint, delightful Isaac,—and he never spoke a truer word,—"doubtless God might have made a better berry than a strawberry, but doubtless God never did."

The bill of fare rated their excellence at fifteen cents.

"Not unreasonable," I pantomimed.

"Not if I pay for them," replied Halicarnassus.

Then we sat and amused ourselves after the usual brilliant fashion of people who are waiting in hotel parlors, railroad-stations, and restaurants. We surveyed the gilding and the carpet and the mirrors and the curtains. We hazarded profound conjectures touching the people assembled. We studied the bill of fare as if it contained the secret of our army's delay upon the Potomac, and had just concluded that the first crop of strawberries was exhausted, and they were waiting for the second crop to grow, when Hebe hove in sight with her nectared ambrosia in a pair of cracked, browny-white saucers, with browny-green silver spoons. I poured out what professed to be cream, but proved very low-spirited milk, in which a few disheartened strawberries appeared rari nantes. I looked at them in dismay. Then curiosity smote me, and I counted them. Just fifteen.

"Cent a piece," said Halicarnassus.

I was not thinking of the cent, but I had promised myself a feast; and what is a feast, susceptible of enumeration? Cleopatra was right. "That love"—and the same is true of strawberries—"is beggarly which can be reckoned." Infinity alone is glory.

"Perhaps the quality will atone for the quantity," said Halicarnassus, scooping up at least half of his at one "arm-sweep."

"How do they taste?" I asked.

"Rather coppery," he answered.

"It is the spoons!" I exclaimed, in a fright. "They are German silver! You will be poisoned!" and knocked his out of his hand with such instinctive, sudden violence that it flew to the other side of the room, where an old gentleman sat over his newspaper and dinner.

He started, dropped his newspaper, and looked around in a maze. Halicarnassus behaved beautifully,—I will give him the credit of it. He went on with my spoon and his strawberries as unconcernedly as if nothing had happened. I was conscious that I blushed, but my face was in the shade, and nobody else knew it; and to this day I've no doubt the old gentleman would have marvelled what sent that mysterious spoon rattling against his table and whizzing between his boots, had not Halicarnassus, when the uproar was over, conceived it his duty to go and pick up the spoon and apologize for the accident, lest the gentleman should fancy an intentional rudeness. Partly to reward him for his good behavior, partly because I never did think it worth while to make two bites of a cherry, and partly because I did not fancy being poisoned, I gave my fifteen berries to him. He devoured them with