individuals. If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment, to enter
into particulars of him. The reflection that the writings must now
inevitably get into print, and that He might yet live and meet with them,
sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form. The elasticity of my
spirits departed. Fruitless was the Bottle, whether Wine or Medicine. I
had recourse to both, and the effect of both upon my system was
witheringly lowering.

In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first began to
revolve what could I ever say if He--the unknown--was to appear in the
Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in this last November
received a turn that appeared to be given me by the finger of Fate and
Conscience, hand in hand. I was alone in the Coffee-room, and had just
poked the fire into a blaze, and was standing with my back to it, trying
whether heat would penetrate with soothing influence to the Voice within,
when a young man in a cap, of an intelligent countenance, though
requiring his hair cut, stood before me.

"Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter?"

"The same."

The young man shook his hair out of his vision,--which it impeded,--to a
packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, with his eye (or
did I dream?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, "THE PROOFS."

Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not the power
to withdraw them. The young man put the packet in my faltering grasp,
and repeated,--let me do him the justice to add, with civility: