Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by
attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the
keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves
through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of
the rain-drops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed
figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned 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 Mohammedans 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