thriving mechanic in quest of a tenement that should come within his
moderate means of rent; now, a ruddy Irish girl from the banks of
Killarney, wandering from kitchen to kitchen of our land, while her
heart still hung in the peat-smoke of her native cottage; now, a
single gentleman looking out for economical board; and now--for this
establishment offered an epitome of worldly pursuits--it was a faded
beauty inquiring for her lost bloom; or Peter Schlemihl, for his
lost shadow; or an author of ten years' standing, for his vanished
reputation; or a moody man, for yesterday's sunshine.

At the next lifting of the latch there entered a person with his hat
awry upon his head, his clothes perversely ill-suited to his form,
his eyes staring in directions opposite to their intelligence, and a
certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole figure. Wherever he
might chance to be, whether in palace or cottage, church or market,
on land or sea, or even at his own fireside, he must have worn the
characteristic expression of a man out of his right place.

"This," inquired he, putting his question in the form of an
assertion,--"this is the Central Intelligence Office?"

"Even so," answered the figure at the desk, turning another leaf of
his volume; he then looked the applicant in the face and said
briefly, "Your business?"

"I want," said the latter, with tremulous earnestness, "a place!"

"A place! and of what nature?" asked the Intelligencer. "There are
many vacant, or soon to be so, some of which will probably suit,
since they range from that of a footman up to a seat at the council-