155
                 About Acquaintances.
a professional sponger.  Talk of Edge.  He
came back from the Virginian peninsula look-
ing very ill and being extremely hard-up.  So
Bellew invited him to visit him at Fordham,
where he bored his host dreadfully for ten
days, and then borrowed $17 of Haney and
went to Philadelphia.  Since then he has
returned but keeps shady : he met Banks
at the carrier office and begged him not to
mention his arrival in New York.  They say
he omitted to pay his bill at the Amity street
boarding-house.  Out with Bellew, Banks
following, to Frank Leslie�s.  J.A. Wood
talking about �this d____d country� and
pronouncing his principal �as greasy as ever.�
Leslie, he said, had been out on a big spree
for weeks; he lived in a Fifth Avenue house
with Mrs Squier; there was no particular
concealment about it.  Talk with honest
Miller the german salesman.  Out with Bel-
lew, having got rid of Banks, of whom the
artist spake dispraisingly saying he didn�t
object to a man�s sponging for a year or two,
or even three, if he liked to do so, but when
it came to be permanent, it was a nuisance-
a drink at Crook and Duffs, then parted-
met Hayes the engraver and went with him
with him in m melancholy return to New York in 1872