excrescence; and he showed me a lock of her hair, which he wore in a
true lover's knot, in a large gold brooch.

I have seldom met with an old bachelor that had not, at some time or
other, his nonsensical moment, when he would become tender and
sentimental, talk about the concerns of the heart, and have some
confession of a delicate nature to make. Almost every man has some
little trait of romance in his life, which he looks back to with
fondness, and about which he is apt to grow garrulous occasionally. He
recollects himself as he was at the time, young and gamesome; and
forgets that his hearers have no other idea of the hero of the tale, but
such as he may appear at the time of telling it; peradventure, a
withered, whimsical, spindle-shanked old gentleman. With married men, it
is true, this is not so frequently the case; their amorous romance is
apt to decline after marriage; why, I cannot for the life of me imagine;
but with a bachelor, though it may slumber, it never dies. It is always
liable to break out again in transient flashes, and never so much as on
a spring morning in the country; or on a winter evening, when seated in
his solitary chamber, stirring up the fire and talking of matrimony.

The moment that Master Simon had gone through his confession, and, to
use the common phrase, "had made a clean breast of it," he became quite
himself again. He had settled the point which had been worrying his
mind, and doubtless considered himself established as a man of sentiment
in my opinion. Before we had finished our morning's stroll, he was
singing as blithe as a grasshopper, whistling to his dogs, and telling
droll stories; and I recollect that he was particularly facetious that
day at dinner on the subject of matrimony, and uttered several excellent
jokes not to be found in Joe Miller, that made the bride-elect blush and
look down, but set all the old gentlemen at the table in a roar, and