with his tail between his legs, licking up the crumbs and gnawing
the fragments of the feast,--such a melancholy cur as one sometimes
sees about the streets without a master, and willing to follow the
first that will accept his service.

In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people as ever had
assembled at the festival. There they sat, with the veiled skeleton
of the founder holding aloft the cypress-wreath, at one end of the
table, and at the other, wrapped in furs, the withered figure of
Gervayse Hastings, stately, calm, and cold, impressing the company
with awe, yet so little interesting their sympathy that he might
have vanished into thin air without their once exclaiming, "Whither
is he gone?"

"Sir," said the philanthropist, addressing the old man, "you have
been so long a guest at this annual festival, and have thus been
conversant with so many varieties of human affliction, that, not
improbably, you have thence derived some great and important
lessons. How blessed were your lot could you reveal a secret by
which all this mass of woe might be removed!"

"I know of but one misfortune," answered Gervayse Hastings, quietly,
"and that is my own."

"Your own!" rejoined the philanthropist. "And looking back on your
serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be the sole
unfortunate of the human race?"

"You will not understand it," replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and
with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting