Welcome anybody just now. One
gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the
weather. They come in at the keyhole; they peer through the
dripping panes; they insinuate themselves through the crevices
of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of the
raindrops.
I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-
jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-brown and wind-
dried; small, quick-winking black eyes,--there he stands, the
water dripping from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows.
I speak to him; but he returns no answer. With a dumb
show of misery, quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of
parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a melancholy
account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular detriment,
loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in
consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable
Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this
veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian
consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to
Yankee organs unpronounceable, name.
Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mahometans
tell us, has two attendant angels,--the good one on his right
shoulder, the bad on his left. "Give," says Benevolence, as
with some difficulty I fish up a small coin from the depths of
my pocket.
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