He felt kindly enough to the good woman in whose house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel to her son; he was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed with great consideration to the Rev.Dr.Pemberton; and he studied with no small interest the physiognomy of the Rev.Joseph Bellamy Stoker, to whose sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a nostril dilating with ominous intensity of meaning.

But he said sadly to himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his Lord.
He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would hold of small significance.

Though he had mourned for no lost love, at least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang of parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes.

He was the father of a dead book.
Why "Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A.M.," had not met with an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating public, it would take us too long to inquire in detail.

Indeed; he himself was never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things which his bookseller's account made evident to him.