The Intelligence Office

From "Mosses from an Old Manse"

Grave figure, with a pair of mysterious spectacles on his nose and a
pen behind his ear, was seated at a desk in the corner of a
metropolitan office. The apartment was fitted up with a counter,
and furnished with an oaken cabinet and a Chair or two, in simple
and business-like style. Around the walls were stuck advertisements
of articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles to be disposed of;
in one or another of which classes were comprehended nearly all the
Conveniences, or otherwise, that the imagination of man has
contrived. The interior of the room was thrown into shadow, partly
by the tall edifices that rose on the opposite side of the street,
and partly by the immense show-bills of blue and crimson paper that
were expanded over each of the three windows. Undisturbed by the
tramp of feet, the rattle of wheels, the hump of voices, the shout
of the city crier, the scream of the newsboys, and other tokens of
the multitudinous life that surged along in front of the office, the
figure at the desk pored diligently over a folio volume, of ledger-
like size and aspect, He looked like the spirit of a record--the
soul of his own great volume made visible in mortal shape.

But scarcely an instant elapsed without the appearance at the door
of some individual from the busy population whose vicinity was
manifested by so much buzz, and clatter, and outcry. Now, it was a
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