Chapter LXXXI: Tom Fay's Soliloquy

"'Most any female lodger up a stair,
Occasions thought in him who lodges under.'

"Don't they, though? Not a deuced thing have I been able to do since that little gipsy took the room overhead, about a week ago! Pat--pat--pat, go those little feet over the floor, till I am as nervous as a cat in a china closet, (and _confounded_ pretty they _are_, too, for I caught sight of 'em going up stairs.) Then I can hear her little rocking-chair _creak_, as she sits there sewing, and she keeps singing, '_Love not--love not_,' (just as if a fellow could _help_ it.) Wish she wasn't quite so pretty; it makes me decidedly uncomfortable. Wonder if she has any great six-footer of a brother, or cousin with a sledge-hammer fist? Wish I was her washerwoman, or the little nigger who brings her breakfast; wish she'd faint away on the stairs; wish the house would catch fire to-night! Here I am, in this great barn of a room (all alone;) chairs and things set up square against the wall; no little feminine _fixins_ round; I shall have to buy a second-hand _bonnet_, or a pair of little gaiter-boots, to cheat myself into the delusion that there's _two of us_! Wish that little gipsy wasn't as shy as a rabbit? I can't meet her on the stairs if I die for it; I've upset my inkstand a dozen times, hopping up, when I thought I heard her coming. Wonder if she knows (when she sits vegetating there,) that Shakspeare, or Sam Slick, or somebody says, that 'happiness is born a twin?' 'cause if she don't, I'm the missionary that will enlighten her? Wonder if she earns her living, (poor little soul!) It's time I had a wife, by Christopher! (Sitting there, pricking her pretty little fingers with that murderous needle!) If she was sewing on _my dickeys_, it would be worth while now. _That's it_--by Jove! _I'll get her to make me some dickeys_--don't _want_ 'em any more than Satan wants holy water, but _that's_ neither here nor there. I shall insist upon her taking the _measure of my throat_ (bachelors have a right to be _fussy_). There's a pretty kettle of fish, now; either she'll have to stand on a cricket, or I shall have to get on my knees to her! Solomon himself couldn't fix any thing better; deuce take me, if I couldn't say the right thing _then_! This fitting dickeys is a _work of time_, too. Dickeys _isn't_ to be got up in a hurry.

"Halloo! there's the door-bell! there's a great big trunk dumped down in the entry! 'Is Mrs. Legare at home?' _M-r-s._ Legare?! I like _that_, now! Have I been in love a whole week with M-R-S. Legare? Never mind, _may be_ she's a _widow_! Tramp, tramp, come those masculine feet up stairs--(handsome fellow, too!) N-e-b-u-c-h-a-d-n-ezzar! If I ever heard a kiss in my life, I heard one then! I won't stand it!--it's an invasion of my rights. I'll listen at the door, as I am a sinner! 'My dear husband!!!'--p-h-e-w! What right have sea-captains on shore, I'd like to know? Confound it all! Well, I always _knew_ women weren't worth thinking of; a set of deceitful little monkeys; changeable as a rainbow, superficial as parrots, as full of tricks as a conjuror, stubborn as mules, vain as peacocks, noisy as magpies, and full of the 'old Harry' _all_ the time! There's 'Delilah,' now; didn't _she_ take the 'strength' out of Sampson?--and weren't 'Sisera' and 'Judith' born _fiends_? And didn't the little minx of an Herodias dance John the Baptist's head off? Didn't Sarah 'raise _Cain_' with Abraham, till he packed Hagar off? Then there was----(well, the least said about HER, the better!) but didn't Eve, the _foremother_ of the whole concern, _have one talk too many with the old 'serpent_?' OF course; (she didn't do _nothing else_!!) Glad I never set _my_ young affections on _any_ of 'em! Where's my cigar-case! How tormented hot this room is!"