WHY MR. BOSTWICK MOVED.

YOUNG Mr. Bostwick has moved. He liked the house he has been living in well enough, and Mrs. Bostwick fairly cried her eyes out when they left it, because it had a bay window and blinds with slats that you could turn so that you could see anybody in the street and nobody could see you. But old Mr. Glasford, the landlord, was very deaf, and it was on account of this infirmity that his tenant left the house. Mrs. Bostwick said she couldn’t see what Mr. Glasford’s deafness had to do with the house, but her husband only looked worried and said it made a good deal of difference with a man’s peace of mind, when he had something he wanted to whisper, and had to whisper it to a man who couldn’t hear anything if he went into a boiler factory. Mrs. Bostwick didn’t understand what difference it made anyhow, but then she wasn’t down town that terrible Wednesday, when old Mr. Glasford went into the store where her husband was selling a lovely young divinity from Denmark a dress pattern off a piece of Centennial percale. Mr. Bostwick saw the old gentleman coming and felt very nervous. Eager to anticipate the demand which he knew the old man was going to make, he dashed toward him with an abruptness that astonished the fair customer who had just lost herself in admiration of Bostwick’s diamond pin, and the fact, just confidentially imparted to her, that he was not a clerk but the silent partner, holding about $475,000 worth of stock in the concern, and that he just worked from pure love of employment. Mr. Bostwick checked the old gentleman about ten feet away from his customer, and leaning over the counter so as to get as close range on his ear as possible, whispered hoarsely that “it wouldn’t be convenient to pay that rent to-day.”

“Hey?” shouted the old man, looking at Bostwick’s agitated face in some alarm, “why, why, wha’s the matter? ’S happened?”

Mr. Bostwick made a futile effort to catch hold of the old man’s ear, intending to pour his explanation into it as one pours water into a funnel, but his landlord briskly dodged and waved Bostwick away with an expression of considerable apprehension. Mr. Bostwick groaned and endeavored to explain to the old gentleman in a manner that would convey to the pretty customer and the others in the store the idea that he was refusing to give the old party credit, and at the same time let old Glasford know that he was bankrupt.

“Can’t do it!” he shouted.

“Can’t do what?” inquired the mystified old gentleman in those stentorian tones so popular with deaf people.

“Can’t help you!” shouted Bostwick, in tones the sternness of which contrasted ludicrously with the sheepish expression of his countenance. “Can’t do anything for you!”

The old man looked at Bostwick in helpless wonder and then at the door, with his mind half made up to run away, under the impression that the young man was crazy. He finally stared at him in open-mouthed amazement and speechless bewilderment.

“Oh, Moses,” thought Bostwick, “he’s mad as a hornet, he’ll break out in a minute; I know he will.” Then he tried him again, in a voice like a steam whistle.

“I can’t do anything for you!”

The old man’s mouth opened still wider, and his eyes stood around on his cheek-bones in their amazement.

“Who asked ye to do anything for me?” he finally gasped. “What is it ye can’t do?”

Bostwick groaned, and in a fit of desperation he broke down, and gave it up.

“I can’t pay that rent to-day!” he shrieked, and the pretty customer was so shocked that she dropped her parasol, fan and paper of gum drops.

“What went to-day?” asked the old man, waving Bostwick off with his stick.

Here the proprietor officiously interposed to cover Bostwick’s confusion, speaking in the highest key he could assume.

“Rent! Rent! House rent, you know! He says he can’t pay his house rent to-day!”

“Rent day?” echoed old Glasford, “yes, oh yes, that’s past, two weeks ago; first of the month.”

“Yes,” shrieked Mr. Bostwick, while the store full of customers and his fellow clerks stood around and smiled, “I know it, but I can’t pay it to-day; haven’t got a cent!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the old man, with a gleam of intelligence passing over his face, “I don’t care about that; that isn’t what I come for. I come to tell you if your wife wanted that front room down stairs papered, to go ahead and have it done, and I’d allow it.”

The pretty customer wouldn’t have a word to say to the discomfited Mr. Bostwick when he went back, and the old man told the proprietor as he went out of the door that he believed that young man was just about half crazy, and the clerks were all so pleasant that Bostwick nearly went mad every time he was reminded of his unfortunate precipitancy, and that is the way he became convinced that it was altogether lighter than vanity to rent of a deaf man.