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. "Not a cent," says selfish Prudence; and I drop it
from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel, "of the poor
stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors of the
sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown
half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our
language, and unable to find employment suited to his
capacity." "A vile impostor!" replies the left-hand sentinel;
"his paper purchased from one of those ready-writers in New
York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low price of
one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to