Rev. Geo. Langford had but a moment before been deeply engaged in solving the problem of the fourth satellite of Jupiter, when a sharp, tingling sensation in the rear of his brain convinced him that a master will desired his attendance.  The scholar, who thus rose to be the servant of Roseton,—­a position that even the President of a Western college might envy, such were its dignities and emoluments,—­stood for a moment at the foot of Roseton’s couch, and in silence received the silent orders of the day.  No words passed, but in an incredibly short space of time Roseton’s commands had flashed into the mind of his attendant, and the latter withdrew to reduce them to writing for the benefit of the four masters of the four departments of the House.  They in turn methodized them for their forty-eight deputies, and one hundred and ninety-two servants—­in addition to the female who came to the house to receive the weekly wash—­performed their daily task intelligently and harmoniously.

A bath of atar of roses next received the master of the House of Pont-Noir.  This was renewed every hour of the day; for Roseton’s fancy indulged the frequent and the casual lavation, and his exacting taste demanded the strictest purity.  A careless servant once ventured to leave the bath filled without a change of the fluid, after it had been occupied; but the negligence was at once detected by the master of Pont-Noir, and his weekly allowance of cologne-water was summarily reduced.  Upon the ceiling, over the bath, were frescoed, in Titianelli’s richest style, the most graceful legends of mythology.  Here Theseus toyed with Ariadne; here the infant Mercury furtively enticed the Grecian Short-horns; here Triton blew his seaweed-tangled horn, and troops of ocean-nymphs threw the surface of the deep into ’sparkling commotions of splendor;’ here Venus allured Anchises, by sweetly calling him to the leafy tops of Ida; here Deucalion surmounted the miraculous floods; and here Pyrrha first instructed wondering men in the knowledge of the existence, beauties and duties of the fairer part of creation.  Here, reclining in dreamful ease, and indulging in the perpetual warmth by which the bath confessed the power of unseen caloric agency, Roseton was wont ever to sport with delicious memories, now with rapturous hopes, and at times to compose those elegant sonnets for the New York weekly newspapers, for each one of which a thousand dollars was joyfully given by the delighted proprietors to the poor of the city.

Carefully wiped, and clothed in a morning robe by twelve gentlemanly attendants, each one a scion of the first families of the metropolis, Roseton was borne to the breakfasting apartment.  Here, indeed, a scene presented itself, among whose splendors imagination only could safely dwell, and before which the practical and the prosaic mind might well grow comatose or skeptical.  Malachite tables of every conceivable shape from the Ural; carpets to whose texture the shawls of Cashmere