[SKETCHES OF SOUTH-CAROLINA.]
[TO PLEASURE.]
[THE TRYSTING HOUR.]
[THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.]
[MOHAWK.]
[SABBATH IN THE COUNTRY.]
[SONG.]
[THE DEVIL-TAVERN.]
[AN EPITAPH.]
[JUNE.]
[CÀ ET LÀ.]
[FORGET-ME-NOT: 'MYOSOTIS AVENSIS.']
[OUR PUBLIC MEN.]
[A CONTRASTED PICTURE.]
[THE MAIL ROBBER.]
[LETTER SECOND.]
[MEMORIALS.]
[LITERARY NOTICES]
[EDITOR'S TABLE]
[LITERARY RECORD.]

THE
Knickerbocker,

OR

NEW-YORK MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VOLUME XXII.

NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN ALLEN, NASSAU-STREET.
1843.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-three.
BY JOHN ALLEN,
In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York.

INDEX.

A.
An Epitaph. By James Aldrich, Esq., [44]
A Contrasted Picture, [60]
A Night on Lake Erie, By Peter Von Geist, 241
A New Version of an Old Fable, 244
An Old Man's Reminiscence, 298
A Dream of Childhood. By Mrs. J. Webb, 342
Anecdote of a Bottle of Wine. By John Waters, 343
Anacreontic. From the Irish, 360
An Evening Hymn. By Miss H. J. Woodman, 402
An Aspiration: 'This, to Thee, Lucy,' 466
Abbottsford Edition of the Waverley Novels, 479
A Lover's Recollections, 575
B.
Byzantium. By the 'American Opium-Eater,' 516
C.
Ca et La. By the Flaneur, [45], 143, 261
Commentary on Proverbs. By 'Polygon,' 119
Classical Studies: Ancient Literature, etc., 174
Change for the American Notes, 267
Chronicles of the Past. By an American Antiquary, 291, 428
D.
Donna Florida. By W. G. Simms, Esq., 265
Death, or Medorus' Dream. By Robert Tyler, Esq., 375
E.
Editor's Table, [69], 176, 270, 378, 480, 587
Early Writings of the late R. C. Sands, [69], 176
Epigram from the Greek of Plato, 259
Exercises at the Albany Female Academy, 377
Elements of a Religious Character. By Rev. George E. Ellis, 440
F.
Forget-Me-Not. By F. G. Halleck, Esq., [48]
Forest Walks in the West, 222
Fiorello's Fiddle-Stick, or the Musical Amateur, 329
G.
Gossip from an American Lady in Paris, [76]
Gossip with Readers and Correspondents, [81], 182, 280, 384, 492, 592
Greek Epitaphs and Inscriptions, By H. C. Lea, Esq., 97
Great-Britain and America. Thoughts at Niagara, 194
Green Spots in the City. By Mrs. M. E. Hewitt, 341
Gleanings from the German. By William Pitt Palmer, Esq., 347
George Washington, the Father of his Country, 445
Grave Thoughts on Punch. By John Waters, 467
H.
Harp of the Vale: a Collection of Poems, 268
Hope. From the German, 297
Her Name. From the French of Victor Hugo, 469
Heart Compensations, 567
I.
Impromptu on receiving a Rose-bud from a Lady, 142
International Copy-right. By 'Harry Franco,' 360
Imaginary Conversations. By Peter Von Geist, 530
J.
Jeffrey and Gifford vs. Shakspeare and Milton, 270
L.
Lines to Pleasure. From the German, [5]
Literary Notices, [66], 168, 265, 580
Lays of my Home, and other Poems. By J. G. Whittier, [68]
Lines to New-England. By E. B. Greene, Esq., 107
Lines to a Canary-Bird. By John Waters, 158
Lines on the Death of a Classmate, 346
Lines to Fitz-Greene Halleck, Esq., 364
Letters from New-York. By L. Maria Child, 372
Lines to October. By H. W. Rockwell, Esq., 421
Lines to a Fayre Personne, etc. By John Waters, 452
Lines to a Humming-Bird. By H. W. Rockwell, Esq., 472
Life and Times of the late William Abbott, Esq., 480, 590
M.
Mohawk: a Cluster of Sonnets, [25], 197
Memorials: a Fragment, [65]
Memoir of the Croton Aqueduct, [67]
Miseries of Human Life, [79]
Mens Conscia Recti: a Tale of Idleberg, 108
Meadow-Farm: a Tale of Association, 159, 228
Mrs. Ellis's 'Poetry of Life,' 181
Memoirs of Count Rostoptchin: Written in Ten Minutes, 357
Manifestation of Mind in Animals, 414, 507
Memoirs of the Court of England, 487
N.
No'th-East by East. By G. W. Mansfield, 146
New-York City and State in the Olden Time, 371
Nature's Monitions: a Fragment, 467
Notes on the Drama, 488
Nemah and Numan. From the Turkish, 519
O.
Olin's Travels in Egypt and Arabia, [66]
Ode to Beauty. By a New Contributor, 226
P.
Poetical Epistle to Thomas Carlyle, [62]
Portuguese Joe. By Mrs. M. S. B. Dana, 118
Poetical Epistle to Edward Moxon, London, 246
Poetical Epistle to Walter Savage Landor, Florence, 367
Poems: by James G. Percival, Esq., 381
Prose and Poetical 'Writings' of Cornelius Mathews, 473
Poets of Connecticut. By Rev. Chas. W. Everest, 479
R.
Rev. John Newland Maffitt: Letter from Boston, 380
S.
Sketches of South Carolina, [1]
Sabbath in the Country. By Peter Von Geist, [26]
Sonnet to June. By Hans Von Spiegel, 45
Stanzas to Woman, 128
Song: The Self-Condemned, 167
Stanzas to a Young Lady. By W. H. Herbert, Esq., 196
Sketches of Florida: Officer of the Night, 323
Sketches of Last Night on Guard, 446
Sketches of St. Augustine: The First Look, 560
Sunset: The Dying Christian. By T. W. Stockton, Esq., 332
Song of the Western Steamboat Men. By F. W. Thomas, Esq., 333
Sunday at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 436
Seed of Contentment. From the German, 451
Sonnet to the 'Buds of the Saranac,' 528
Stanzas to Winter. By D. H Barlow, 529
Sonnet to the Rev. H. W. Bellows. By Mary E. Hewitt, 576
T.
The Trysting-Hour. By Mrs. R. S. Nichols, [7]
The Quod Correspondence, [8], 129, 250, 348, 453, 569
The Fountain of Helicon: a Philosophical Research, [31]
The Devil-Tavern: a Tale of Tinnecum, [32]
The Mail-Robber, [61], 245, 365
The Illustrated Common-Prayer, [68]
The Irish Sketch-Book, [78]
Thales of Paris. From the French, 151
The Spanish Student. By H. W. Longfellow, 173
The Inferno of Dante. By T. W. Parsons, 175
The Washington Monument, 180
The Innocence of a Galley-Slave, 198, 299
The Lost Heart. By Mrs. J. Webb, 219
The Death of a Gentle Maiden: a Fantasy, 220
The Maiden's Burial. By Mrs. H. J. Woodman, 240
The Printer: a Sketch from Life, 260
The Dying Student. By E. B. Greene, 264
The Count of Paris: a Sketch, 322
The Lessons of Autumn, 329
The 'Empire State' of New-York, 335
The Season of Death, 356
The Crowning-Hour. By Charles James Cannon, 377
The Mysteries of Paris, 378
The Attaché. By Sam Slick, 382
Thoughts on Immortality, 395
The Rich-Poor Man: or, the Secret of Contentment, 401
The Doomed Ship. By Robert L. Wade, 403
The Deity. By Miss Mary Gardiner, 412
The Influential Man: a Sketch of Tinnecum, 422
The Broken Vow. By Jas. T. Fields, Esq., 427
The Top of New-York, 437
The Birth-Day. By R. S. Chilton, Esq., 439
The Exile's Song, 440
The Story of Abul Cassim's Shoes. From the Turkish, 470
The Dial, for the October Quarter, 486
Thoughts at Trenton-Falls. By R. S. Chilton, Esq., 535
The Midnight Dream. By Mrs. R. S. Nichols, 536
The Venus of Ille. From the French, 537
The Old Man. A Ballad, 559
The Meeting at Sea. By A. C. Ainsworth, 568
W.
Wines, on the Civil Government of the Hebrews, 168
Washington, a National Poem, 192
Widows, 576

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

Vol. XXII. JULY, 1843. No. 1.

[SKETCHES OF SOUTH-CAROLINA]

NUMBER FIVE.

It was as beautiful an evening as a lover could ask, the second day of April, 1842, that I bade my friend Dana good-bye, and started in my sulky for a tour over the land of Nullification. I left Charleston in the evening, that the wearisome task of crossing the river might be over, and the earlier start upon my journey be made the following morning. Tarrying at the house of a fine old planter during the night, who amused me until nearly cock-crowing with his long stories of revolutionary days, I arose, after a very slight refreshment from sleep, and was on my way toward Georgetown an hour before sunrise. It was a toilsome way enough, the road running parallel with the sea-shore the whole distance of sixty miles, just far enough inland never to catch a glimpse of the water, and leading you over a dreary pine barren, where neither house, cultivated field, nor flowing streamlet occurred to divert your attention for the whole day. It was pleasant enough at first to feel one's self alone in those boundless forests of pine; and for an hour or two of the early morning I was sufficiently amused by the novel sight of some young alligator splashing into the water from the road-side, as the noise of my wheels awoke him from his siesta, or of a huge moccasin darting away beneath the dense reeds and lily-pads of the swamp, or of the ever-varying, myriad-toned music of the mocking birds who filled the air with their melody. But by degrees, as the sun began to rise above the trees, and the heavens to assume that brazen face which characterizes a southern sky, the never-changing scenery about me grew dull and wearisome, and I found myself looking forward in the hope of finding some place by the roadside where my horse might slake his thirst. No such place, however, appeared; on and onward we jogged over that apparently unending level of creaking sand, without one sign of human industry or human life. As matters began to grow serious, and my weary steed to manifest symptoms of dissatisfaction which could not be mistaken, a kind Providence sent a fellow-being along my path, in the shape of the most hideous, tattered, and wo-begone negro I had ever seen—my first specimen of a plantation servant. The poor fellow's face and garments, however, sadly belied him; for upon my salutation of 'Boy, good morning; can you tell me where I can find water for my horse?' he touched his rimless hat and most civilly replied:

'Oh, yes, Massa! dere is fine water just back ob you!'

'Back of me?' I replied. 'Strange I did not see it!' and turning my horse to retrace the path, the negro discovered my greenness, and laughing, said:

'Why, Massa, you 'ab no bucket to water de horse!'

'Bucket?' I inquired in astonishment! 'Bucket? What do you mean, boy? What do you mean?'

The poor fellow could scarcely contain his gravity, while he replied, pointing to the bottom of the sulky: 'Sure, Massa 'ab no bucket! Massa no bin long in Carolina to tink water he horse widout bucket! Every body hab bucket on he carriage in Carolina!'

Here was indeed a perplexity of which I had never dreamed, and to extricate myself from which more than surpassed my share of even Yankee shrewdness. I could not think of driving fourteen long miles back to my morning resting-place in the heat of that torrid sun, nor of going forward the twelve miles to my first stopping place on the Georgetown road; and yet, from all the information I could gain from the negro, these seemed the only conditions upon which horse or driver were ever again to meet with the proprieties of civilized existence. In utter despair I looked up to my informer, with a respect I had never bestowed upon tattered garments before, and asked: 'Boy, what am I to do?'

'Don' know, Massa! Neber see a carriage wid'out bucket afore! Don' know, Massa!'

Though my informant had hitherto evidently been greatly amused at my perplexity, the despair of my countenance, or his pity for the jaded beast, now awakened his sympathies; and after scratching his head—a manipulation which the negro invariably performs when he is in trouble—he suddenly rolled the whites of his great eyes up to me and said with quickness, 'Me tink now, Massa! Me tink how Massa water he horse!' and plunging into the woods, presently returned with his hat filled with water. It was a capital thought, and the promptitude of its execution would have done honor to a Connecticut pedler. My dilemma was over; the negro's hat of water was a goblet of ambrosia to my steed; and the tattered son of Ham became in my eyes fair as a messenger of the gods.

Between the Ashly and Santee rivers, a distance of more than thirty miles, there are upon the main thoroughfare but three dwelling-houses. Upon the banks of the latter, one begins first to see something of the wealth of the Carolina rice-plantations. For many miles up and down the North and South Santee rivers, which are here separated but a single mile, are cultivated those deep, rich bottoms, annually flowed and inexhaustible in resource, which are the glory of the State. The lordly owners of these manors pass the winter months in superintending the affairs of the homesteads, gathering about them all those luxuries which minister to ease and pleasure, of which none better understand the value, or select with more taste, than do these descendants of king Charles's cavaliers, and entering with a zeal and alacrity into those rural sports which are the zest and glory of a southern country life. Finer horsemen, more skilled marksmen, on the plain or in the forest, hardier frames for pugilistic feats, or a quicker eye and prompter hand for a game at fence, the world cannot produce. They are generally men also of liberal learning and generous dispositions; frank, hospitable, and courteous; and, bating a tithe of that hot-blood chivalry upon which they are too apt to pride themselves, noble and humane in all their impulses.

One marks every where at the South the eminently kind relations which exist between master and servant. To every man born and bred upon the plantation, the negro seems essential, in a thousand respects with which a northerner can have no sympathy. I saw nothing of what we call prejudice against color in all my travels. In infancy the same nurse gives food and rest to her own child and to her master's; in childhood the same eye watches and the same hand alternately caresses and corrects them; they mingle their sports in boyhood; and through youth up to manhood there are ties which link them to each other by an affinity that no time or circumstances can destroy. An illiterate, rough planter, who was by no means remarkable for the kindness he showed his servants, said to me one day: 'I travelled last summer all over Iowa territory, and I didn't see a nigger in two months. To be sure I felt kind o' badly, but it couldn't be helped; so I made the best of it, thinking all the time I should be home again bye and bye. Well, Sir, I got back again as far as Zanesville in 'Hio, where there was a gineral muster and a heap of people; and pretty soon I heard a banjo; thinks I, there's some of our folks, I know; and sure enough there was two niggers and a wench going it powerful; and the way I went up to 'em and got hold of their hands, and says I, 'How are you, my good fellows? how are you, girl?' and the way I shook and they shook, was a caution to abolitionists, I tell you?'

Georgetown District is the wealthiest portion of the State; but a more miserable collection of decayed wood domicils and filthy beer shops than are clustered together to make up the town, it would be difficult to find. Indeed, unlike the free States, the wealth of the South lies almost entirely in the country; the towns, unless Charleston form an exception, being made up of artizans and traders. The historical associations of Georgetown District are of great interest; and many of the localities, rendered famous by feats of valor during the war of our Revolution, are still pointed out. An old soldier, whom I met by accident at the ferry-house on the banks of the Pedee, conducted me to the spot where General Marion invited the British officer to dinner—a scene immortalized by the pencil of White. Marion had long contended against the enemies of his country at fearful odds, and though the poverty and daily diminution of his troops were not known to the British, yet to himself, through the whole of the first campaign in South Carolina, they were sources of great disquietude and alarm. He managed, however, by celerity of movement and a perfect knowledge of the country to keep the enemy's forces in constant fear, and now and then to obtain over detached bodies of troops a signal victory. It was after one of these sudden dashes upon a foraging party whom the British colonel had sent into the country, in which Marion had been even more successful than usual, that an officer was sent to his camp with a flag of truce to propose an exchange of prisoners. Marion received him in the woods, negotiated the terms upon which the exchange should be made, passed the writings necessary for the purpose, and, after concluding all the preliminaries, invited the officer to dine with him. The invitation was accepted, and Marion, leading the way still farther into the forest, took his seat upon a log near which a watch-fire was burning, and invited the officer to do the same. Presently a negro appeared, and, raking open the ashes, uncovered a batch of roasted potatoes, which he presented upon a board, first to the stranger, and then to his master. No apologies were offered for the meagre fare, and after the dinner was over, the officer departed with his flag. It is said that upon regaining his own lines, he forthwith threw up his commission, on the ground that it was hopeless to contend with an enemy who required no shelter but that of the forest trees, and no food but roasted potatoes.

As you advance inland from Georgetown, and begin to enter the cotton country, the scenery is completely changed. The huge live oaks, draperied with moss, the peculiar characteristic of the sickly lowlands, all disappear, and with them depart nearly all the evidences of wealth or taste or refinement. Instead of princely mansions surrounded by old parks and highly cultivated plantations, one sees nothing but low, piazza'd domicils, in fields bare of vegetation, and the appendage of miserable hovels scattered at short distances here and there for the field-hands. In the low country the rank growth upon the marshes affords some compensation for the want of green fields of grass; but in the up country every shade of greenness is lost in the interminable red clay-fields which spread out every where around you. It was new to me that the upland grasses could not be cultivated below Virginia, but so it is. Every where, by the road side, in the court-yard, over the fenced fields, and in the forest, the bosom of mother earth is bared before you; and to one accustomed to the green mantle with which she robes herself in New England, the sight is almost shocking. Equally so was another sight, with which, however, I soon became familiar, but which at the outset startled my sense of decency to a degree; I refer to the nudity of the young negroes. Up to ten and eleven years of age, the colored children of both sexes run about entirely naked; and in the more secluded plantations they may be seen at even a later age, without a fig-leaf of covering to their jetty limbs. I beg my friends, the abolitionists, will not set this down as a new instance of the cruelty of the masters, as I had repeated and indubitable evidence of its being a habit of such determinate choice upon the part of the children, as to defy every effort to break it up. That it manifests the state of utter degradation to which the slaves are reduced, I do not deny; for every where, in lowland and highland, country and city, nothing is more evident than the mental and moral degradation of the negro.

As the value of the lands and the wealth of the inhabitants decrease, while you journey toward the back country, so also does the intelligence of the people. I never met in my whole life with so many white persons who could neither read nor write, who had never taken a newspaper, who had never travelled fifty miles from home, or who had never been to the house of God, or heard a sentence read from his Holy Word, as I found in a single season in South Carolina. Like the inhabitants of Nineveh, many of them could not discern between the right hand and the left. What wonder then that the hosts of Yankee pedlers, until driven out by the sumptuary laws, fattened upon the land! 'What do you think I gave for that?' asked an ignorant planter in Sumpter district, while pointing to a Connecticut wooden clock which stood upon a shelf in the corner of the room. 'I don't know,' was my answer; 'twenty dollars, or very likely twenty-five!' 'Twenty-five dollars, stranger!' replied the planter; 'why, what do you mean? Come, guess fair, and I'll tell you true!' I answered again, that twenty-five dollars was a high price for such a clock, as I had often seen them sold for a quarter of that sum. The man was astonished. 'Stranger,' said he, 'I gave one hundred and forty-four dollars for that clock, and thought I got it cheap at that! Let me tell you how it was. We had always used sundials hereabout, till twelve or fourteen years ago, when a man came along with clocks to sell. I thought at first I wouldn't buy one, but after haggling about the price for a while, he agreed to take sixteen dollars less than what he asked, for his selling price was one hundred and sixty dollars; and as I had just sold my cotton at thirty-four cents, I concluded to strike the bargain. It's a powerful clock, but I reckon I gave a heap of money for it!'

In fact, during those years when the staples of Carolina sold for nearly thrice their intrinsic value, and wealth flowed in an uninterrupted stream through every channel of industry, the plantations of the South became the legitimate plunder of Yankee shrewdness. It was no meeting of Greek with Greek in the contest of wits, but a perfect inrush of shrewd, disciplined tacticians in the art of knavery, upon a stupid and ignorant population. The whole country was flooded with itinerant hawkers. There is scarcely an article in the whole range of home manufactures upon which fortunes were not made during those times of inflated prices of the southern staple products. Through the mountain passes of Buncombe county there flowed a stream of pedlers' carts, wagons, carry-alls, and arks, which inundated the land. Indeed, so great at length became the evil, and so overmatched in the contest of wits were the planters of the uplands, that the legislature passed laws forbidding a Yankee pedler to enter the State.

It is this deplorable ignorance, which is prevalent over a large portion of South Carolina, that constitutes the most insuperable obstacle to the removal of slavery. Among the more wealthy and intelligent of the population, juster sentiments prevail in regard to that great evil; but their opinions and wishes are greatly overbalanced by the masses of the middling classes. They, wedded to the customs of their fathers beyond all hope of improvement; vegetators upon the soil cleared and prepared by their ancestors; ignorant, idle, and overbearing; driven by thriftless modes of agriculture, and the impoverishing system of slave-labor, to penurious economy, and scouting every suggestion of manual toil as servile and degrading; they compose the great barrier around the institution of negro servitude, which the tide of public sentiment never reaches, and which the advancing intelligence of other portions of the world cannot soon affect. To them, hedged in by the antiquated prejudices of a barbarous age, alike unfitted to know and unwilling to receive the new truths of humanity and religion, the negro seems the connecting link between man and the brute. Of their own origin and destiny they know and care little; of him who toils for them, less; and it is vain to hope, until the States between them and the free people of the North shall have broken down the system which curses alike the owner and his soil, that the intelligence of an independent and virtuous people can ever reach them.

In these Sketches, which are now brought to a close, I have endeavored to represent the condition of South Carolina as I saw it. Of slavery I have said what I believe, and of its white population what I know to be true. There, as elsewhere in a world tainted by evil, injustice too often embitters the cup of life. But it is not the slave only, bending to his irksome task, nor he who toils under the heat of a southern sky alone, who drains it to its dregs. The chalice is commended to the lips every where. And deeply has the writer drank, from the hands of those who profess to be guided by the divine precepts of Christ, banded as they were to subvert oppression and wrong in southern institutions, a draft of injustice more poisonous than the bitterest potion of slavery.

[TO PLEASURE.]

List a mortal's guest, sweet Pleasure!
Why so fleeting, answer, pray?
Lost as soon as found, thy treasure!
None can thy dear presence stay.

Thank thou Fate, she cried, whose minions,
All the gods, love me alone;
Were I fashioned without pinions,
They would keep me for their own!

W. P. P.

[THE TRYSTING HOUR.]

BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS.

I.

Beside my casement's trailing vines,
By meditation led,
I sit, when Sleep his pinion waves
Above each drooping head:
When all the shadowy forms that haunt
The bright abodes on high,
Steal softly forth, in silvery troops
From chambers of the sky.

II.

As down the midnight air they float
Upon celestial cars,
I turn me to a steady light
That gleams among the stars;
A prophet-light it is to me,
And shadows forth the hour
That calls my spirit there to meet
A seraph in its bower.

III.

Beside my casement still I sit,
When goes my spirit forth,
With waving plume, and rustling wing,
Up toward the blazing North:
While solemnly the stars look down,
And solemnly they seem
To shed a fair and brilliant light
On this, my waking dream.

IV.

And high each everlasting hill
Lifts up its crownéd head,
Like some tall, stately cenotaph
For nations of the dead!
The broad, blue river rolls as free
As waters in that clime
Which bends above these waves, that flow
Like some subduing rhyme.

V.

Beside my casement's trailing vines
The zephyr finds me still,
When matin-hymns are gushing forth
From bird, and bee, and rill;
For not until the morning star,
That herald of the dawn,
Has flashed upon the eastern skies,
Are my sad eyes withdrawn.

VI.

I weary of the brilliant day,
The warm, sunshiny air.
And cling unto the solemn night,
When nature kneels at prayer;
For then my spirit wanders forth,
With a resistless power,
And, with its kindred spirit, holds
The midnight Trysting-Hour.

[THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.]

Harry Harson.

CHAPTER NINTH.

In the same room which has been already described, in Harry Harson's dwelling, and in one of the stout, plethoric chairs before mentioned as constituting a part of its furniture, and beneath the superintendence of the busy clock, and under the watchful eye of that respectable dog Spite, sat Jacob Rhoneland, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek leaning on the palm of his hand, and his eyes half shaded by his long blanched locks, listening with deep anxiety to Harson, who occupied a chair opposite, and was speaking with an earnestness which showed that the subject on which he discoursed was one in which he felt no slight interest.

The manner of old Rhoneland would have attracted the notice of even a casual observer. He seemed restless and nervous; and at times even frightened. Occasionally he smiled faintly, and shaking his head, half rose from his seat, but sat down, scarcely conscious of what he did; and leaning his forehead on the palm of his hand, seemed to listen with breathless attention, as if dreading to lose a word of Harson's remarks, which were occasionally strengthened by his pressing his hand gently on Rhoneland's, as it rested on the table. At last, Harson, in conclusion, said in an earnest tone: 'Now tell me, Jacob, on your honor, do you love her?'

'Do I love her?' repeated Rhoneland; 'do I love my own little Kate, who slept in my arms when a child, and who, now that she has become quite a woman, and I am gray, and feeble, and broken down, still clings to me? Others found me a querulous, troublesome old man, and fell away from me; but she never did. Don't ask me if I love her, Harry, don't ask that again,' said he, shaking his head, and looking reproachfully at Harson. 'Do I think of any one else, or care for any one else? Dead and frosty as this old heart is, she has the whole of it; and she deserves it; God bless her! God bless her! It's not a little matter that would make me forget Kate.'

The old man raised his head; and his eye lighted up with an expression of pride, as he thought of his child. It was transient, and as it passed off he seemed to be absorbed in deep thought; and sat for some time with his eye resting on a small speck of blue sky which looked cheerily in at the open window. What strange things peopled those few moments of thought; for each moment in the memory of the old is teeming with phantoms of hopes and dreams, which once crowded about them; familiar things, part of themselves, of their very being, but now melted into air; faded and gone, they cannot tell when or whither; and of faces and forms long since shrouded in the tomb. And in the dim fancy of age, in faint whispers, speak voices whose tones are never to be heard again; awakening old affections for those at rest, subdued indeed by time, but yet unextinguished, and slumbering in hidden corners of memory, and appealing to the heart of the living, and begging still to be cherished there. Rhoneland sighed as he turned his eyes from the window, and looked down at his withered hands. 'They were not so when Kate was a child. He was far from young, even then, but not so old and shattered as now. Kate's mother was living too; she was much younger than he was; and he had hoped that she would have outlived him; but he had followed her to the grave, and he was left alone with his little girl.' His lip quivered; for he remembered her watchful kindness; her patience; the many marks of affection which had escaped her, showing that he was always uppermost in her thoughts; and that amid all other occupations, she never forgot him. They were trifling indeed; perhaps unnoticed at the time; but he missed them when she was in her grave, and they came no more. She had begged him to cherish and guard their child when she should be gone, and there would be none to love her but him. Had he done so? Ay! with heart and soul; with heart and soul,' muttered he, rising and walking across the room, to conceal the working of his countenance, and the tears which started in his eyes.

'Oh Harry!' said he, turning to Harson, 'if you knew all, you wouldn't ask if I love Kate. She's every thing to me now. All are gone but her; all—all!'

He returned, and seated himself, with a deep sigh. His lips moved as if he were speaking, though no sound escaped them; but after a moment he said: 'It's all that I can do for one who's dead.'

'I do believe that your child is dear to you, Jacob; I never doubted it,' said Harson; but there is another question which I must ask. 'Have you observed her of late? Have you noticed her drooping eye, her want of spirits, and failing strength?'

Rhoneland moved restlessly in his chair, and then answered: 'No, no, Harry, you're jesting. Kate's eye is bright, and her cheek full and round; her step elastic and firm. I watch that, Harson. Oh! Harry, you don't dream how anxiously I watch her. Her life is mine; her heart's blood is my heart's blood. She's in no danger, no danger, Harry,' said he, taking Harson's hand between his, and looking appealingly in his face. 'Is she in any danger? Don't deceive me. Is any thing the matter with her?'

'No, not just now,' replied Harson. 'But suppose you should see her becoming thin, and her looks and health failing; and even though she should not die, suppose her young heart was heavy, and her happiness destroyed—and by you?'

The old man looked at Harson with a troubled, wistful eye, as he said: 'Well, Harry, well; I 'm old—very old; don't trifle with me, I can't bear it. What do you mean? Is Kate ill?'

'No, not exactly ill,' replied Harson, much at a loss how to introduce his subject. 'Suppose, in short, that she should fall in love, some day—for young girls will do these things—and suppose that the young fellow was a noble, frank-hearted boy, like—like Ned Somers, for instance—would you thwart her? I only say suppose it to be Somers.'

'Kate doesn't think of these things,' said the old man, in a querulous tone. 'She's a child; a mere child. It will be time enough to talk of them years hence. God help me!' muttered he, pressing his hands together, 'Can it be that she, my own little Kate, will desert me? I'll not believe it! She's but a child, Harry; only a child.'

'Kate is nearly eighteen, Jacob,' replied Harson, 'and quite a woman for her years. She's beautiful, too. I pretend to no knowledge of women's hearts, nor of the precise age at which they think of other things than their dolls; but were I a young fellow, and were such a girl as Kate Rhoneland in my neighborhood, I should have been over head and ears in love, months ago.'

Jacob Rhoneland folded his hands on the table, and leaned his head upon them, without speaking, until Harson said, after the lapse of some minutes, 'Come, Jacob, what ails you?'

Without making any reply to this question, Rhoneland sat up, and looking him full in the face, asked, in a sad tone: 'Do you think, Harry, that Kate, my own child, has turned her back upon me, and given her heart to a stranger? And do you think that she will desert her father in his old age, and leave him to die alone?'

'Come, come, Rhoneland, this is too bad,' said Harson; 'this is mere nonsense. If the girl should happen to cast a kind glance at Ned, Ned's a fine fellow; and if Ned should happen to think that Kate had not her equal among all whom he knew, he would be perfectly right. And then if, in the course of time, they should happen to carry matters farther, and get married, I don't see why you should take it to heart, or should talk of desertion, and dying alone. I'll warrant you Ned is not the man to induce a girl to abandon her friends. No, no; he's too true-hearted for that.'

'Well, well,' said the old man, rising and gazing anxiously about him, 'God grant that it may never happen. It will be a sad day for me when it does. I'd rather be in my grave. I cannot tell you all; but if you knew what I do, perhaps you'd think so too. Indeed you would, Harry. There's one who knows more about Somers than either you or I; much that's bad, very bad. I can't tell his name.'

'I know it already,' replied Harson: 'Michael Rust.'

'Ha!' ejaculated Rhoneland, in a faint voice, his cheek growing ghastly pale; 'You know Michael Rust, do you?'

'I know something of him, and but little in his favor. What he says against Somers is not worth thinking of. Let him clear his own name. Perhaps he may be called on to do it some day, and may find it no easy matter. And now, my old friend,' said he, taking Rhoneland by the hand, 'since we have spoken of this Rust, let me caution you against him. Listen to no tales of his respecting Kate, or Ned, or any one else. Beware of all connection with him. Above all, give him no hold on yourself; for if you do, depend on it, you'll rue it. I've made inquiries about him; and you may rest assured that I do not speak unadvisedly.'

Rhoneland had risen to go; but as Harson spoke he sank feebly in his chair, and buried his face in his hands, his long hair falling over them, and shrouding them and it from view; but no sound of emotion escaped him; although Harson could see that he trembled violently, and that there was a great internal struggle going on. At last he said: 'It's very hard, Harry, to feel, that you are in the power of a man who would not hesitate to sacrifice even your life to his own ends; and yet to know that it must be so; that, hate and loathe as you may, your fate is linked with his, and that he and you must sink or swim together. But so it is, God help me! a poor, bewildered old man! Oh! Harry, could I but die; with none to molest me, or see me, but my own dear child; with no one to haunt my death-bed, and torture me; and threaten me and her; and could I but know that when I am gone she at least will be happy, I'd do it, Harry, I'd do it! Life is not to me what it once was. It's dull enough, now.'

'And who is this who has such power over you?' inquired Harson, placing his hand on his shoulder; 'Come, be frank with me, Jacob; who is it? Is it Michael Rust?'

Rhoneland started up, looked suspiciously about the room, and said in a quick, husky voice: 'Did I say it was Rust? I'm sure I did not, Harry. Oh! no, not Rust. He's a noble, generous fellow; so frank, and free, and bold. Oh! no, not Rust; he's my best friend. I wouldn't offend Rust, nor thwart him, nor cross his path, nor even look coldly on him. Oh! no, no, no! Don't speak of him. I don't like to talk of him. Let's speak of something else; of yourself, or Ned, or Kate—of Kate, my own dear little Kate. She's a noble girl, Harry, is she not? Ha! ha! that she is!' and the old man laughed faintly, drew a deep sigh, and turned abruptly away.

'Harry,' said he, after a pause, 'Will you make me a promise?'

'If it is one which a man may honestly keep, I will,' replied Harson.

'When I am dead will you be a father to Kate?—love her as I have loved her—no, no that you cannot—but love her you can, and will; and above all,' said he, sinking his voice, 'let no evil tales respecting her father be whispered in her ear; let her believe that he was all that was virtuous and good. It's an honest fraud, Harry, a deceit without sin in it, and I know you'll do it; for when I'm in my grave, her heart will be the last hold I shall have on earth. When the dead are swept from memory, too, the earth is lost to them indeed. Will you promise, Harry?'

'I will,' said Harson; 'as my own child, will I guard her from all harm.'

'That's all; and now, God bless you! I've lingered here too long. Don't forget your promise. I feel happier for it, even now.'

Jacob Rhoneland, however, was not doomed to reach his home in the same frame of mind in which he then was; for he had not gone a great distance from Harson's house, when a voice whose tones sent the blood rushing to his heart, exclaimed: 'Ha, Jacob! my old friend Jacob! It makes my heart dance to see you walking so briskly, as if old age and the cares of life left no mark upon you. You're a happy man, Jacob.'

Rhoneland started; for in front of him, bowing, and smirking, and rubbing his hands together, stood Michael Rust, his eyes glowing and glittering, with a glee that was perfectly startling. Rhoneland muttered something of its being a fine day, and of the pleasant weather, which had tempted him abroad, and then stopped abruptly.

'You acted unwisely, my friend, very unwisely, in being from home at such a moment,' said Rust, 'for I just came from there; and such doings, Jacob! such plots! such contrivances! such intrigues, and love-making, and billing, and cooing, and whispering! and such conspiracies against old dad! Not that I believe little Kate has any thing to do with it. Oh, no! but she's young, and Ned Somers is—no matter what. I know what he is; and others know too. But I never make mischief, nor meddle. I say nothing against him. No! he's a noble fellow—very noble; so open and candid! Ha! ha! ha! I hope you won't go to your house some day and find your daughter flown, and with him; and I hope if it is with him, that it will be to the church; that's all—that's all. Good-bye, Jacob; I'm in a vast hurry,' said he, bustling off, as if recollecting some important engagement. 'Dear me! I've lost a world of time. Good-bye, good-bye. If you should happen to get home soon, you'll surprise them both.'

As he went off, he turned back, and muttered to himself: 'I've sown the seeds of suspicion in his heart against his own child. Let him hate her, if needs be; and let him think her the vilest of the vile. It will favor my ends.'

The old man stood for a long time where Rust had left him, with his hands clasped, looking about him with a bewildered air. He seemed like one stunned by some heavy and overpowering blow. He took one or two steps, tottering as he went, and then leaned feebly against a house. The words 'my child! my child!' once or twice escaped him, in a low, moaning tone; he passed his fingers over the buttons of his coat, unconsciously twitching and jerking them; he looked on the pavement, and seemed endeavoring to regain some train of thought which had passed through his mind; and then shaking his head, as if disappointed at his want of success, scarcely knowing what he did, he commenced counting the cracks in the bricks. A few small stones were lying on the sidewalk, and he went to them, and idly kicked them off, one by one: his thoughts wandered from one subject to another, until he began to watch the smoke, as it escaped from the chimneys of the houses opposite. Some was dark and brown, and some blue and bright, and circled upward, until it and the sky became one; while the other floated off, a dark lowering mass, as long as he could see it. People were passing in various directions; and he wondered whither they were going, and how many there were; he commenced counting them; he made a mistake; he had got to twenty, when three or four passed together; so he wiped the score from his memory, and commenced afresh. At last a man jostled him, as he stood, and told him to get out of the way, and not to occupy the whole walk. This recalled him to himself; and he set out for home. As he went on, the recollection of what Rust had told him again crossed his mind; and his feeling of indifference gave place to one of fierce excitement. With his teeth hard set, his eyes flashing fire, his long hair streaming in the wind, his step rapid, yet tottering and irregular, and with an expression of bitter anger mingled with intense mental anguish on every line of his face, he bent his steps toward his own house. It was a bright day, and the warm sunshine was sleeping on roof and wall; on cellar and house-top, warming many a sad heart; lighting up many a heavy eye, and calling forth all that is happy and joyous in earth and man. Strange was it! that under such a sky, with such a glad world about him, an old man, hanging over the grave, should dare to utter curses and imprecations against his fellow man. Yet such was the tenor of his words:

'Curses on them! curses on them!' muttered he; 'the false ones! When I was striving like a very beast of burden, yielding body and soul to torments, for her sake, to play me false! It was bitter, but it was human. Whenever troubles thicken about a man; when he is blighted and crushed to the earth; when his heart is bruised and bleeding, and yearns for the love and sympathy of those about him; when a mild word, a kind look, are of more worth than gold or jewels, then friends drop off. Suffering and trouble drive off friends, like a pestilence. I was in drivelling dotage, to think that she would be aught else than the rest of them. What though I did give her life, and fondle her on my knee in infancy; and hang over her when she slept; and pray, come what might to me, that she might be happy? What though I did cherish and protect her, and love her, when this old heart was warped against all the rest of the world, until every fibre of it was entwined with hers; until every thought was for her; and how I should plot, and plan, and contrive to preserve the accumulations of a hard life, so that when the earth covered me, she might live luxuriously, and think kindly of me? What though I did all this? I became in her way; for I had gold, and she wanted it! That's it! Oh! what a fool I was,' continued he, bitterly, 'to imagine that she would prove true, when all others have proved false; and that gratitude would bind her to me, so that when I should become decrepid, and so that I could not totter about, but must mope out the remnant of my life, like a chained prisoner, that she would be near me, with her bright face and cheerful voice; and would cheer me up; and would tell me that I had watched over her childhood; and that she loved me for it. Happy dreams they were!' said he, mournfully; 'happy dreams! Ah, Kate! my own little child! you should not have forgotten your old father; indeed you should not. But no, no!' he added, checking himself, 'it could not have been her; I'll not believe it. It was not her—poor child; she never did harm in her life. She was always good tempered, and kind, and patient. I have tried her patience sadly. As my faculties desert me, and my mind becomes feebler, I grow more and more peevish, and I want her more and more. Oh, no! she must not leave me—she must not. I'll go to her, and kneel to her, and pray to her not to turn me off. I am too old now to find a new friend. I'll beg her to stay with me until I die. I'll not live long, now, to trouble her; and perhaps she will bear with me till then; she must not go; oh, no! she must not. Go,' muttered he, his mood changing, and his eyes beginning to flash; 'go where? with Somers? with Somers! Can it be that he has been all this while scheming to rob me of her? Go with Somers? with Ned Somers? He said he hoped it would be to the church. What did he mean? what could he mean? But I'll soon know,' said he, hurrying on; 'I'll soon know!'

Impetuous the old man had always been, though age had in a great measure subdued his spirit; but now the recollection of Rust's words lashed him into fury; and when he reached his house, he dashed into it without pausing to reflect what he should say, or how he should act. He flung the door open; and, as if to justify the very tale of Michael Rust, there stood Kate, with her hand in Ned's, and her head resting against his shoulder.

'Ha! ha! taken! taken!' shouted the old man, with a kind of frenzied glee; 'taken in the very act! Plotting treason! plotting treason! It was a glorious conspiracy, was it not, Ned Somers? to steal into a man's house, and, under the garb of friendship, to endeavor to wean away his child, and to carry her off? Oh! how some men can fawn! what open, frank faces they can have! how they can talk of love, and honor, and generosity! what friendly smiles they can wear! And yet, Ned, these very men are lying, and all the while the Devil is throned in their hearts, and sits grinning there!'

Somers stared at him in undisguised astonishment; for he was fully convinced that the old man had lost his reason; and under that impression he placed himself between him and Kate, lest in his fury he should injure her.

This movement did not escape Rhoneland. 'Good God!' said he, raising his clasped hands to heaven, 'he already keeps me from my child! Shall this be? Out of my house! out of my house!' shouted he, advancing toward him, and shaking his fist.

'Never,' returned Somers, 'until I am convinced that you will not harm your daughter.'

'I harm her! I harm her!' repeated Rhoneland. 'God of heaven! what black-hearted villains there are! The very man who would by false oaths and protestations decoy her from her own hearth, and when she had deserted all for him, would cast her off, a branded thing, without name or fame, he, he talks of protecting her from her own father! No, no, Ned Somers,' he said, in a voice of bitter calmness, 'you may go; I'll not harm her.'

His words had given Somers a clue to the cause of his conduct; and pale as death, but with a calm face, he said, 'Will you hear me, Mr. Rhoneland?'

'Hear you! Have I not heard you and believed you? Ay, I have. I was in my dotage; and you too, Kate, you listened and believed, did you not? Ah! girl, girl! a serpent charmed in Eden! But it's past now. I'll love you, Kate, though he do not. They said that gold was my God. They said that for gold I would barter everything; but they didn't know me. He told you so too, Kate, did he not?—he told you that I'd sell you for that. He whispered tales of your father in your ear, until you became a renegade at heart; and you, my own child, plotted with a stranger to desert your home. He told you that he loved you; and would make you his wife; did he not? Poor child! poor child! God help her! she knows no better! Ned Somers,' said he, turning to the young man, 'you must leave this house, and come here no more. My daughter is all I have to bind me to life, and I cannot spare her. You must go elsewhere to spread your web. For your vile designs upon her, may God forgive you—I never will!'

'Jacob Rhoneland,' said Somers, 'I have borne more from you than I would have taken from any other man. You are not now in a state to listen to reason, nor perhaps am I able just now to offer it; but you have said that of me which I should be false to myself not to answer; and which I declare to be utterly untrue. I do love your daughter; and love her well and honestly; and I would like to see the man, excepting yourself, who dare say otherwise. Some one has been lying to you; and can I but find him out, he shall pay for it. You, Kate, don't believe it?' said he, turning to the girl, who stood by, with blanched cheek, and the tears in her eyes.

'No, no, Ned; I do not; nor will father, when he's calm,' said she, taking the old man's hand. 'Some person has been slandering you to him; but he'll get over it soon.'

Rhoneland drew his hand hastily from her, and turning to Ned, said: 'Leave the house! I have already told you to do so. Will you wait until you are thrust from it? Begone, I say!'

'Go, go, Ned, for my sake!' exclaimed Kate, pushing him toward the door. 'He'll never be right while you are here. Go, dear Ned, go.'

'I can't go before I've told your father how matters stand.'

'No matter for that now,' said Kate, earnestly; 'I'll make all right; go, go!'

Half pushing, half persuading him, she finally induced him to leave the house.

'Friend Ned seems in a hurry,' said a voice in his ear, when he had gone but a hundred yards. 'Has sweet little Kate been unkind? Has she told you that she loved Michael Rust? Ha! ha! Or has old dad been crabbed? Ha! ha! A queer old boy that dad of hers, Ned; a queer old fellow; full of freaks! Do you know he hinted to me that he thought you had an eye on Kate, and wanted to run off with her? Wasn't that a good one, Ned? Ha! ha! It makes me laugh to think of it. He didn't know that Michael Rust was the fellow; that he was the one to guard against.'

'I believe you,' said Ned, bitterly; 'I believe that Michael Rust is the one to guard against; and Jacob Rhoneland will find it out some day.'

'To be sure he will, to be sure he will!' said Rust. 'Yet the old fellow was afraid of you; you Ned, you! He even hinted that your purposes were not honest. Some kind friend had been at work and filled his head with queer tales about you. And all the time he did'nt dream of me; and didn't know that it was me that Kate was dying for. He'll find me his son-in-law yet, some day. I wish you would keep away from his house, Ned. To tell the truth, I'm jealous of you. For in confidence, Ned, I do believe that Kate is a little of a coquette at heart; and I have often said to myself: 'Although I see nothing particularly kind in her manner to Somers, who knows what it may be when they're alone? I'm sure there's nothing in her actions, when others are present, to betray how kind and coaxing she is to me when we are alone. Ah! Ned; she is all tenderness in our moments of privacy. The last time I saw her she said that she respected you, but swore that she did not care the snap of a finger for you. God bless her for that! how happy it made me! how charming she looked! Ah! she's an angel! upon my soul I must go back and kiss her!'

Somers, chafing with fury at being thus beset, had walked on with a rapid step, while Rust kept pace with him, hissing his words in his ear; but as he uttered the last sentence, Rust turned away. As he did so, Somers caught him by the collar, and drawing him close to him, said:

'Michael Rust, I believe that every word you have just uttered is false, and a vile slander against as noble a girl as ever lived. I will not punish you as you deserve, because I promised Kate Rhoneland that I would not; but before you go let me tell you this: A greater liar and villain than yourself, never walked. Things are oozing out about you, which will make this city ring with your infamy. Tongues which have been tied by gold have found fear more powerful, and have spoken; and there are those tracking out Michael Rust's course, for the last few years, who will not let him rest till they have run him down. You're fond of figures of speech; there's one. Now go and kiss Kate Rhoneland, with what satisfaction you may!'

He flung him from him; and, without looking at him, turned off in a by street.

CHAPTER TENTH.

The few words uttered by Somers, as he flung his tormentor from him, threw Michael Rust into a fit of profound abstraction. Pondering over his schemes, and wondering which particular one was about to fail; and yet so confident in his own sagacity and clear-sightedness, that he felt disposed to think failure impossible; he took his way to his own house. There, assuming the same costume which he usually wore when in his office, and which, in age, certainly added ten years to his appearance, he locked the door of his room, put the key in his pocket, and sallied into the street.

'If what he said be true,' muttered he, 'there must be a traitor. Him I can put my finger on; and first of all, him will I punish; and now, for a trial of that new animal Kornicker. Bah!'

Had Mr. Kornicker overheard this allusion to himself, it is scarcely probable that his gratification would have been extreme; for admitting himself and all the rest of the human race, zoologically speaking, to be animals; even then, there was much in the tone of Michael Rust to indicate that Mr. Kornicker belonged to a genus distinct from and inferior to the human species in general; and this was a position against which there is little doubt that Mr. Kornicker would have contended manfully. Without pausing to reflect upon the justice or injustice of his observation, and in truth forgetting that he had made it, Rust took the shortest route to his office, whither, to explain what will follow, it may not be amiss to precede him.

From the day on which he had taken Kornicker into his service, he had not been at his office, nor had he met his new clerk, or seen him, or heard from him. In truth, many other matters pressing upon him, prevented his calling there; and although he did not forget that Kornicker was almost a stranger to him, for he forgot nothing, yet knowing that he could do no harm where he was, and that there was little to embezzle or steal, except the door-key, he in a great measure dismissed him from his thoughts, until he required his services. Although this matter dwelt thus lightly on the mind of Rust, it was the source of much profound thought and intense abstraction on the part of Kornicker. He had endeavored to learn something respecting Rust; and even formed an intimacy with 'the desperadoes,' for that purpose; and what little he learned there certainly did not make him more at ease; for even the most desperate of them shook his head, and gave him a friendly caution 'to look sharp;' at the same time adding, though in less refined language, that Rust was 'a small colored man, but hard to masticate.' It was observed, however, that by degrees Mr. Kornicker's abstraction grew less and less, and his spirits rose. At times, unnatural sounds, such as loud laughter, and even songs, were heard to emanate from Rust's hitherto silent room; and in the dusk of the evening, dim figures were seen skulking to and from it; and in the day time, shabby-genteel men loitered carelessly through the entry, and after listening at the key-hole, gave a shrill whistle, which being answered from within, they dove into the room, and disappeared. At times, too, the clinking of knives and forks against crockery was heard from within; and on such occasions, the phantom of the small boy with a white cap on his head was seen to flit up and down the stairs, with a dish in his hand, or a bottle under his arm, always vanishing at Rust's office, or disappearing in the bowels of the refectory below.

But notwithstanding all these symptoms of returning vivacity, Mr. Kornicker's mind was far from tranquil on the subject of the mystery of his present situation.

'Fallen into the toils of a little old man,' said he to himself, as he sat, on the morning on which we open this chapter, in front of the fire, with his legs stretched at full length in front of him; the toe of one foot, supporting the heel of the other; of a little old man, with a red handkerchief tied round his head, a broad brimmed hat on the top of that, and a camblet cloak over his shoulders. 'It's too deep for me. I can't fathom it. The victim of a hideous compact, whereby I am decoyed into his service, to sit in a room eight feet by twelve, on a chair without a cushion, a yellow wooden chair, with four legs, and a back made of the most uneasy kind of timber, probably lignum-vitæ, and yet with no cushion; to wait for people who never come, eat without drinking, and submit to divers other small inconveniences; such as bringing up coal in a pail without a handle; kindling my own fire with damp wood, and snuffing sixpenny dips with a pair of tongs, one of whose feet is absent. There's something very mysterious about it—very. All I hope is, that this Mr. Rust is not the 'Old Boy.' That's all. I don't wish to speak disrespectfully of him: but I do sincerely hope, for his own sake, that he isn't the 'Old Boy.' It would be bad for him, if he was. As for myself,' said he, drawing out his snuff-box, and snuffing with great absence of mind, 'it makes no difference; I'm used to it. I've been brought up in trying circumstances. I slept in a grocery sand-bin on the north corner of a street for a week. Not such a bad place either, in warm weather; but I was ousted by a tipsy gentleman, whom I found there one night. The tipsy gentleman was sick, too; and when tipsy gentlemen get sick, most people know what follows. The place was untenantable afterward. But that was nothing to this; positively nothing. I knew what I was about then; now I don't. I never met but one case in point with mine. It was that of the fellow who fell into the clutches of forty unknown women, and remained with them, feasted with them, and all that—they paying the shot, as in my case—until one morning they all came weeping, and wailing, and gnashing their teeth, to tell him that they were off by the first boat; and that he must stay there until they came back, and might do whatever he liked, and go wherever he chose, except into the stable. There 's no stable here, but I'm restricted in liquors; that carries out the simile. The house-keeper handed him the keys, and he went jingling about, for forty days, with the keys hanging at his button-hole; his hands in his breeches pockets, whistling and yawning; locking and unlocking doors, and smelling flowers; eating apples, and pea-nuts, I suppose, although they were not specially mentioned, and poking his nose into all the odd corners. There the simile fits again; only it's soon got through with here, seeing that there 's only under the table and up the chimney to look, and I've done both. No matter; that chap wound up by having an eye knocked out; and I hope the joke won't be carried so far with me.'

Mr. Kornicker cut short his reflections and remarks; and sitting upright, pulled up his vest, and felt in the neighborhood of his watch-pocket. Suddenly recollecting, however, that he had left the article which belonged there in the safe-keeping of a friend, who, with a kindness worthy of all praise, not only took charge of it for him, but actually paid for the privilege of doing so; he pulled down his vest and said, 'he supposed that it was all right, and that they would be here presently.' If his last remark applied to guests whom he expected, he was apparently correct in his surmise; for he had scarcely uttered it, when there was a single sharp knock at the door.

'Who's there?' demanded he, without starting.

'Open the door!' replied a voice from without.

'It isn't locked,' said Kornicker; and it might have been observed that there was a remarkable abatement of firmness in the tone of his reply.

In pursuance of this hint, the door opened, and in walked Michael Rust!

Mr. Kornicker, in the course of his checkered existence, had frequently found himself in positions in which he was taken dreadfully aback; but it is doubtful whether he had ever detected himself in a situation which threw him into a state of such utter and helpless consternation as his present one; for, relying on the continued absence of his employer, he had that day invited four particular friends 'to drop into the office,' and, as he had carelessly observed, 'to take potluck with him—a trifle or so; anything that should turn up.' This was the very hour; and here was Rust.

He made an unsuccessful effort to welcome his visiter. He got up, muttered something about 'unexpected pleasure,' looked vacantly round the room; rubbed his hands one over the other; made an attempt to smile, which terminated in a convulsive twitching of his lips; and finally sat down, with his intellect completely bewildered, and without having succeeded in any thing, except exciting the surprise and suspicion of Rust.

'There'll be hell to pay!' said he, communing with his own thoughts, 'there positively will; I know it; I see it, I feel it; I'm done up; no hope for me! There comes one of them,' thought he, as a step deliberately ascended the stair; but it passed to the flight above. There was some relief in that; but it was only a respite. Come they must! He wrung his hands, snuffed spasmodically, returned the box to his pocket, and took it out again instantly. 'What shall I do? What shall I do? What the Devil shall I do?' exclaimed he, mentally.

Rust had spoken to him three times, but he had not heard a word. 'This is all very strange,' muttered Rust, looking about the room as if to seek some explanation. The first thing which attracted his attention was the fact that the two chairs which he had left in the office had by some odd process of multiplication increased to six.

'There are six chairs here,' said he, addressing his clerk, in a stern tone; 'where did they come from? Who are they for?'

Mr. Kornicker looked round, and smiled helplessly. 'Six? Oh, ay; one, two, three, four, five—six. So there are six,' said he.

'Well?'

'Well; oh, well? Oh, yes, quite well, I thank you; very well,' said Mr. Kornicker, whose ideas were rapidly becoming of a very composite order, and who caught only the monosyllable, without exactly taking in its meaning.

'I'm afraid that Mr. Kornicker is lonely in the absence of his friend Michael Rust,' said Rust, with his usual sneer; 'that he finds this dull, dingy room too dreary for him; and has invited six chairs to keep him company, and cheer up his spirits.'

Kornicker made no reply; he could not, for he was stupefied by hearing another step ascending the stairs. This time it paused at the door, as if the visiter were adjusting his collar, and pulling down his wristbands; after which, a thinnish gentleman, dressed in a green coat, with wide skirts; white at the elbows, and polished at the collar, and pantaloons tightly strapped down, gray and glistening at the knees, and not a little torn at the pockets, sauntered carelessly in.

'Servant, Sir; servant, Sir;' said he, nodding to Rust, at the same time, advancing with a familiar air, and swinging in his hand a particularly dingy handkerchief. 'This, I suppose, is one of us. He's an old chip; but he may be come of a prime block.' The latter part of this remark was addressed to Kornicker; and terminated with a request, that he would 'do the genteel, and present him to his friend.' Kornicker, however, sat stock-still, looking in the grate, and evincing no signs of life, except by breathing rather hard.

'Ha! ha! Ned's gone again—brown study!' said the gentleman, winking at Rust, touching his own forehead, and at the same time extending his hand. 'It's his way. I suppose you're one of our social little dinner-party to-day?'

'Yes, oh, yes!' said Rust, quietly; for these words, and the six chairs, afforded an immediate solution of his difficulties. 'I dropped in; and being intimate with Ned, thought I'd stop.'

'So I supposed,' said the other. 'As Ned won't, I will. My name's Sludge, Mr. Thomas Sludge,' said he, extending his hand to Rust. 'Happy to make your acquaintance. Your name is—eh? eh?'

'Quite a common one; Smith; Mr. Smith,' replied Rust.

'Ha! ha! you're joking; but no—you don't belong to that numerous family, though, do you? Eh? well; I thought from the cut of your eye, that you were an old quiz, and supposed, of course, you were joking.'

At the announcement of the name, Kornicker looked round with a vague hope that he might have been mistaken; and that it was not Michael Rust who had thus interrupted his plans; but there he stood. 'He's a dreadful reality!' thought he, shaking his head. 'He's no Smith. He's Michael Rust. God knows what he's going to do, I don't. If they come, I pity them. That's all I can do for them; but it's their affair; they must trust to their own resources, and the care of an overruling Providence. I suppose they'll survive it. If they don't, Rust will have to bury them.'

He was too much overwhelmed by what had already occurred, and by what was to come, to attempt to extricate himself from his difficulties. They had fallen upon him with a weight which was insupportable; and now, a ton or two more would make but little difference. They might mash him flat if they chose; he should not resist them.

In the mean time, Rust and Sludge became exceedingly sociable. They conversed on all topics, cracked their jokes, and were exceedingly merry on the subject of Kornicker and his employee, and of the tricks which were played upon that respectable personage.

'Ha! ha!' said Mr. Sludge, 'wouldn't he kick up a rumpus if he did but know what was going on here? The very idea of Rust arriving at this stage of knowledge, seemed so absurd that they laughed until the room rang.

It was not long before their number was increased by the addition of a short, square-built gentleman, with round cheeks and green spectacles, who was introduced by Mr. Sludge as 'Mr. Steekup, one of us.' He was followed by a thin fellow in elderly attire, and with a very red nose. This latter person was supported by a friend with very large whiskers, and a shaggy great-coat with huge pockets. The first of these two was presented as Mr. Gunter, and the last as Mr. Buzby. Each of these gentlemen, as they respectively entered, went up to Kornicker, and slapped him on the shoulder, at the same time saluting him with the appellation of 'my tulip,' or 'my old buck,' or 'my sodger,' or some other epithet of an equally friendly character; to all of which they received not a word in reply. But though Kornicker's bodily functions were suspended, his thoughts were wonderfully busy.

He felt that he was done for; completely, irremediably done for. He had an earnest wish, coupled with a hope, a very faint hope; a hope so vague and indefinable that it seemed but the phantom of one; that his guests would be suddenly seized with convulsions of an aggravated character, and die on the spot, or jump out of the window, or bolt up the chimney, or cut each other's throats, or melt into air. He did not care what, or which, or how, or when, or where. All his thoughts and wishes tended to one particular end; that was, their abrupt departure, in some sudden and decisive manner. But they evinced no disposition to avail themselves of either means of getting out of his way, of which he left them so liberal a choice. And to increase his misery, amidst them all sat Rust, with his head bound in his red silk handkerchief, bowing and smirking, and passing himself off as one of themselves; drawing out their secrets, and quizzing old Rust, and occasionally casting on his clerk an eye that seemed red-hot; cracking double-sided jokes, which made them laugh, and took the skin off him; and calling him 'Ned,' and asking why he was dull, and why he didn't make himself at home as he did; and whether he didn't think that old Rust would make 'a flare up,' if he should happen to drop in; and why he didn't ask old Rust to his dinners sometimes; and all in so pleasant a tone, that the guests swore he was a diamond of the first water, and Mr. Sludge hugged him on the spot.

Mr. Kornicker wondered if he was not dreaming; and whether Rust was in reality there, and whether he himself was not sitting in front of the fire sound asleep. It would be pleasant to wake up and find it so; but no, it could not be; people in dreams didn't laugh like these fellows. How could they laugh as they did, when he was in such a state! How little they understood the game that was going on! How they'd alter their tone, if they did! It was ridiculous; it was exceedingly ridiculous. He ought to laugh; he felt that he ought; but he wouldn't yet; the dinner was to come, and perhaps he might then; he didn't know; he couldn't say; he'd see about it. Hark! There was a thump against the wall below, and a jingling of spoons, and knives and forks, against crockery. Now for it! Another thump; another, accompanied by another jingle. He wondered whether the boy had spilt the gravy. He hoped he hadn't; but supposed he had. It made no difference. He wondered whether he'd brought the brandy; supposed he had; of course he had. It only wanted that to damn him! and of course he would be d—d. He always had been, and always would be; it was his luck. The person who was bringing the dinner stumbled again; but he didn't fall. 'No such good luck! If he had fallen, if he only had fallen, and broke his neck, or smashed the dinner, or any thing, to prevent his reaching that door; but no; he was too sure-footed for that; any other boy would have done so; but he didn't. He reached the door, and saluted it with a hearty kick; at the same time informing the company that if they were hungry, he rather guessed they'd better open it, as his hands were full. Kornicker thought that his hands were full too; and even had a faint idea of laughing at this play upon words; but the inclination passed off without his doing so. Michael Rust opened the door, and the boy came in. Kornicker knew it. He neither looked round nor moved; in fact, he closed his eyes; yet he knew it—he felt it. He had an innate perception that the boy was there, within three feet of him, bearing in his hands a large tray, with dishes, and a brandy bottle on it. And now the clattering commenced; and he was conscious that the boy was setting the table. What would be the end of all this; what could be? After all, Michael Rust might be a jolly fellow, and he hadn't found it out; and perhaps he wanted to make him at home, and keep up the joke, to save his feelings. He would be glad to think so; but he didn't; no, no, he was certain that there was some devil's play going on.'

The only person who seemed fully to appreciate his situation was the boy from the refectory, who, with the instinct peculiar to boys of that class, had detected it on the spot; and abruptly placing a dish on the table, retired to a corner, with his face to the wall, where he laughed violently in private. A warning look from Rust put a stop to his mirth; nor did he again indulge it, until the table being set, and being informed that the guests were not proud, and could wait on themselves, he retreated to the entry, where he became exceedingly hilarious.

'Come Ned, my boy, be seated,' said Rust, going up to Kornicker, and slapping him on the shoulder. 'Wake up; you know we must be merry sometimes; and when could there be a better opportunity than when that old fool Rust is away? He'll never find it out. Oh, no; come, come.'

Kornicker made a faint effort to decline; but a look from Rust decided him, and he rose, went to the table, and mechanically seated himself in the lap of Mr. Sludge, who reminded him that he was not a chair, but that there was an article of that description vacant at his side. Kornicker smiled feebly, bowed abstractedly, and took a seat. He could not eat. He attempted to sip a little brandy, but choked in swallowing it. The dinner, however, went on merrily. The knives and forks clattered against the plates; the roast beef grew smaller and smaller; the vegetables skipped down the throats of the guests as if by magic; and the bottle knew no rest. In fact, the only article on the table which stood its ground, was a sturdy old Dutchman in a cocked-hat, who had been metamorphosed into a stone pitcher; and sat there, with his stomach filled with cold water, and his hands clasped over it. Lord! how merry they were! And as the dinner went on, and the bottle grew low, and another was called for by Rust, how uproarious they became! How they sang, and howled, and hooted! What a din they created in the building! By degrees the entry became filled with the 'desperadoes' from the upper stories, who, attracted by doings kindred to their own, accumulated there in a mass, and enlivened the performances, by howling through the key-hole, and echoing all the other cries, from the bottom of their lungs. But loudest and merriest, and as it appeared to Kornicker, most diabolical of all, was Michael Rust; helping every one; passing the bottle, and laughing, and yet constantly at work, endeavoring to worm out of his companions something against Kornicker which might render him amenable to the law, and which he might hold over his head; a rod to bend him to his purposes, should he ever prove refractory.

As the dinner advanced, and the bottle declined, the guests grew humorous. Mr. Buzby in particular, who after several unsuccessful efforts succeeded in describing the painful situation of a pig, in whose ear a dog was whispering some confidential communication. He also attempted to imitate the remonstrating scream of the animal; but failed, owing to his utterance having become somewhat thick. Mr. Gunter then rose to offer thanks to Mr. Kornicker; but sat down on discovering that Mr. Buzby was terminating his communication by an address of a similar character; and that Mr. Steekup was engaged in restraining Mr. Sludge, who was bent on performing an intricate hornpipe on the table, which he guaranteed to do without breaking a plate or discomposing a glass; but which Mr. Steekup resisted, being of opinion that his guarantee was but doubtful security. Mr. Sludge, however, was not to be thwarted. He grew animated; Rust encouraged him; he discussed the matter vehemently; he addressed every body, on all subjects; he struggled; he fought, and was finally removed from the room, and cast into the arms of the desperadoes, in the entry, to whom he protested manfully against this treatment; and one of the skirts of his coat, which had been torn off in the debate, was ejected after him. This occurrence, together with the fact that a third bottle had become empty; and that no more was called for by Rust; and that it was growing dark, which was the hour for deeds of chivalry among choice spirits like themselves, seemed to be the signal for a general break-up. After shaking hands affectionately with Rust, and telling him that he was 'a potatoe of the largest kind,' and slapping Kornicker kindly but violently on the back, and saying that they were sorry to see him so 'd—d glum,' they all spoke on promiscuous subjects at once, and departed in a body, each trying in a very earnest manner to impress upon the rest something which he forgot before he uttered it, but which he supposed he would remember presently.

Rust waited until the silence showed that the guests and the 'desperadoes' had departed together; and then turning to Kornicker, and rubbing his hands together, said:

'A very pleasant little party we've had, Mr Kornicker; a very pleasant little party. Michael Rust is much obliged to you for dispelling the gloom of his office, and making it the gathering-place of such select society. He can't express his thanks in terms sufficiently strong. He feels grateful, too, for your strict adherence to the terms of the agreement between us. Twenty dollars a month, meals for one, liquor for none. These were the terms, I think; but Michael Rust is growing old, and his memory may have failed him. Perhaps, too, brandy isn't a liquor; he isn't certain; it used to be, when he was a boy; and he doesn't think that it has changed its character; but it may have done so, and he may have forgotten it; for you know he's old and childish, and even in his dotage.'

Mr. Kornicker shook his head. 'I knew it must come!' thought he. He muttered something about his 'standing the shot for the brandy himself.' He made a futile effort to get at his snuff-box, but failed; said something about 'apology to offer,' and was silent.

'Well, Sir,' said Rust, after a pause, altering his manner, 'I have found you out. You haven't yet discovered what I am. Get these things removed; for I have that on hand which must be attended to. I'll overlook this, but it must never be repeated.'

'Kornicker, glad to escape thus easily, and yielding, partly to that ascendancy which Rust invariably acquired over those whom he made use of, and partly cowed by the consciousness of guilt, and the fear of losing a comfortable situation, slunk out of the room in search of the boy from the refectory.

[MOHAWK.]

A CLUSTER OF SONNETS TOUCHING THAT VALLEY.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL

I.

Full many a glorious image have I caught,
Sweet valley! from thy gentle scenery;
Brooks blue with the June heaven; white cliff, and sky,
And forest-shaded nooks; nor less, the Thought
That stirs in Nature's hushed solemnity,
The boundless Thought which fills the solitude
And holy twilight of the pathless wood,
With its perpetual and present mystery.
How like a passion it pervades these deep,
Dark groves of hemlock, while the sultry noon
Fills the green meadows with the heats of June,
And hangs its haze upon the mountain-steep!
It is the breath of God, who here hath made
Meet worship for Himself, amid the thickest shade.

II.

Beneath this roof of maple boughs, whose screen
Of thick, young leaves is painted in the brook,
The golden summer hath a pleasant look,
Caught from blue, stainless skies, and hill-tops green
With field and forest. Deep within this nook
Of bright, smooth waters, where the lace-like fern
Is pictured with the wild-flower's crimson urn,
And thickets by the winds of noontide shook:
Amid the twinkling green and silver, lies
His glorious image; clouds that sweep the vale,
White wood-hawks breasting the sweet August gale,
Inverted forests, and serenest skies
Scooped out below the loose and glittering sand,
With many a glimpse of town and sunny mountain land.

III.

There is a romance mingled with this sweet,
Wild forest scenery; this cool, deep glade,
Whose nooks at noon are dark with thickest shade,
These gulfs where boughs of beech and maple meet
And mingle in the sultry mid-day heat;
Dark hollow, and green bluff, all teem with wild
And glorious legends. From this cliff up-piled
With moss-stained rocks, where mid his green retreat
In the dense thicket the brown wood-thrush sings,
Far through the landscape's mild and mellowing haze
I mark the battle-fields of other days,
Fields trod of old by the red Mohawk kings,
And misty valleys golden with the blaze
Which Summer from the heaven of August flings.

H. W. R.

Utica, (New-York,) 1843.

[SABBATH IN THE COUNTRY.]

BY PETER VON GRIST.

It is Sunday in our pleasant village, and the very air seems to feel it. It is lighter and purer than it was yesterday, and moves stealthily, as though afraid of breaking the general stillness by its rustling. The shops are all shut, but there is no gloominess about them: they too are enjoying the season of rest. And three or four venerable cows are stretched on the green common, lulled to a state of philosophic calmness, and sunk in sober meditation. What delicious music the church-bell makes! It rings out, sotto voce; and the still, charmed air modulates with a gentle motion, like unbroken ripples on the surface of a sleeping pond. First comes a single, heavy peal; then a vibration, like a distant echo; then another, fainter and more distant still; and another, and another, each fainter and quicker than the preceding; till in the course of a few seconds nothing is heard but a confused jingling; and while we are thinking whether this jingling is not that which we sometimes hear in our ears at the dead of night, and which we then decide to be fairy-bells, afar off, another heavy stroke sends down another clear, sweet wave of sound, and the process of vibrations is repeated.

But now the people from the country around begin to come in. Huge lumber-wagons, containing farmers and their sons, in Sunday coats and stiff collars, with their wives and daughters in straw bonnets and pink ribands, and calico dresses, come rattling through the streets, and deposit their loads on the church-steps. The villagers too come out of their houses and walk slowly over toward the meeting-house. It is easy to distinguish the great men of the place; (what place has not its great men, on one scale or another?) the lawyer, the physician, and those older inhabitants, who came here first, and have grown rich through age. They wear finer clothes, their boots are polished, and perhaps their faces are ornamented with spectacles. It is easy to distinguish them, too, by their demeanor. Their walk shows their consciousness of possessing superior importance; and a very pleasant thing that consciousness is, on any scale. Arrived on the steps, they accost each other with affability; nod to the farmers with benignity, and say, 'How do you do, Mrs. Johnson?' in an open tone of voice, that the standers-by may see how friendly they are to all. The young men and maidens look on them with silent veneration: for from their earliest youth they have been accustomed to regard Doctor Brown and 'Squire White as among the greatest in the land; men who had a care over the whole country, and whose dignity of bearing was the consequence and indication of that elevation of mind which was necessary in order to take in such wide views. They are men whose knowledge knows no bounds; they are the ones who make speeches on the Fourth of July; are officers of the temperance society, and the regiment of militia; and therefore the young men and maidens reverence them, and the old men make way for them, in the assembly of the people. It is a natural feeling, natural and pleasant to all parties; and I cannot tell to which it is the most pleasant, the admirer or the admired. But they are going in: I enter with them, and walk down the aisle with a sedate step and slow.

One of those of whom I have spoken last, the doctor, I should judge from his appearance, has given me a seat in his slip, near the centre of the church. What a holy repose steals over the spirit, as we sit down in the house of worship! The strife and turmoil of the world never obtrude themselves into this sacred place; all are for a while forgotten. The oil of awe, and yet of gladness, is poured on the bubbling waters of passion, and they sink to rest. The faint heart, 'wounded, sick, and sore,' is revived and healed by the very breath of the sanctuary; for within these walls the air itself seems consecrated. A solemn and reverential feeling settles down on the mind of the worshipper; and he involuntarily assumes a serious deportment. The people come in, one by one, and take their seats noiselessly, as though they had put off their shoes from their feet on this holy ground. The light rustle of a lady's dress, and the occasional slam of a pew-door, in opening or shutting, alone are heard; and these interruptions only serve to make the succeeding silence more deeply felt.

I look around on the assembly, and among so many men, who for the past week have been digging in the earth, or hammering incessantly on the anvil or the lap-stone, or engaged in the most mean and unintellectual employments, there is not one careless or vacant face. Every heart is elevated, and every face is refined in its expression, by the associations of the place. The humble are exalted, as it is in man's nature to be, when his eyes and thoughts, from being fixed on the earth, are lifted up, and hold communion with things above the earth. Ambition of honor or wealth is shamed; the world is but a little thing, when, as now, we look down on it; and here pride finds no place. Care smooths his rugged brow, and over the sunny face of the maiden steals a shade of deeper thought. Therefore we are all alike; the barriers of ice which during the week have separated man from his fellow, are to-day broken down; and we feel, sitting here worshipping together, that we are fellow-pilgrims; that we are indeed of the same family.

Anon the minister comes in, with reverend countenance and careful step. Every eye is bent on him, with affectionate respect, as he places his hat on the bright little table under the desk, and mounts up to, and shuts himself in, the pulpit. Instinctively we all rise when he does, and invoke the divine presence; though we are conscious that that presence has been with us, and around us, ever since we entered the house. When the rustle of re-seating ourselves, like that of many dry leaves shaken by the wind, has subsided, how calmly and soothingly the voice of the speaker falls on our ears, reading out of the holy book! It is a familiar passage; a passage which I had heard often and often before I could read it, or understand all the words; one which I learned by heart almost as soon as I could learn any thing; which I have heard repeated week after week for many years; and yet now every syllable is sounded so distinctly that the picture comes up as vividly as ever, and I cannot help listening. I forget for the time all that is to come; submit myself to follow slowly along with the words of the speaker, and feel my quiet heart overflowing, as it receives the beautiful story, with its simple and sublime moral.

While I sit and suffer these thoughts, like the spontaneous images of a dream, to pass over my mind, the hymn has been read, and my reveries are broken by music from the choir, floating softly down. I am in no mood to criticise, and it is not difficult to imagine that the sounds do not proceed from mere human lips; but that beings who take a deeper interest in man's welfare than he himself takes, are clothing their words of exhortation or comfort in melody, and speaking at once to our heart and understanding. If this was not fully imagined before, it becomes almost real when the last long-drawn note dies away, as though the sweet minstrels had accomplished their mission to this earthly tabernacle, and had departed toward their own abode.

And now rises the preacher, severe and grave. Every glance is directed toward him, and every ear is open to catch the first, long-coming accents. I do not wonder that they love to gaze on him; even I do now. He is a man past the prime of life; gray hairs are plentifully sprinkled over his head; his face is somewhat thin and worn, as though with long watching and study; but his frame is upright, and the look which he slowly casts over the expectant congregation, is full of import and solemnity. There is a mild, affectionate light in his eye, and love to God and to all God's creatures beams out from every lineament of his countenance. Calmly he displays, after the good old fashion, his handkerchief of spotless white, and calmly deposits it under the right lid of the book before him. There is such an air of quiet dignity about the movement, that I love him for it. But the preparations are all gone through with; a routine which we would not miss, and which he would be lost without. He reads his text with emphatic enunciation, and begins his heart-felt address. It is evident that he does feel it. I cannot doubt it for a moment, when I look on his face. I can see that it is heart-felt; and therefore it is not strange that it should be heart-felt by his hearers too.

What a luxury to hear those plain truths! There is no mystery about them, no darkness. The mind is not led off into futile speculations concerning things infinitely above its reach, or so subtle as for ever to elude its grasp; but the grandest principles—and there are none but what are grand—appear on their natural level, the level of the humblest comprehension. While we are least thinking of it, the good man turns some general remark, in the truth of which we have just acquiesced, toward us, personally, as individuals; meanwhile, by his eye, making every hearer feel that he is meant. I cannot divert my attention; I am compelled to think only as he wills, and am startled by the conviction which forces itself on me, so personally does he speak to me, that he is looking strait into my heart. The chapel becomes a hall of justice; my evil motives, and passions, and actions, in long array come thronging up, and I must perforce sit in judgment on them. No excuses or shiftings avail; in the twinkling of an eye, I see the character of the motive or action, and, in spite of myself, decide justly respecting them. It is humbling, truly, and it ought to do me good.

In fact, it has done me good already, as well as the rest who hear. For now, when the speaker comes to tell of love, and goodness, and mercy, how much sweeter sound the words than ever they did before! The house itself seems lighter, and the faces of all in it are brightened, like the faces of men which have been darkened through fear, under the shadow of an eclipse, when it passes happily away. We all feel that it is good for us to be here, and are surprised that it is so late, when, after another brief prayer, we are summoned to rise and receive the benediction—it seems to me that we should kneel to receive a blessing from such lips—and the morning services are over.

If I followed my inclinations, I should stay here during the intermission; but that would expose me to notice; so I take up my hat, and mingle in the crowd which is pouring out. How different from the crowd which one meets in the saloon of fashion, or at a political meeting, or at any other place, where men are accustomed to congregate! Here we are all jostled together, but gently, decorously. We do not lose sight of ourselves, or of the dignity of reflecting beings. We are rather a company so full of the thoughts which we have just received, that we must think them all over again, and have no time to stop and exchange compliments, or to respond to them with laughter equally inane. Not even when we emerge on to the common, and all take our diverging ways toward home, can a voice be heard rising higher than a whisper. A Sabbath stillness reigns over all.

In the afternoon, the scene is much the same as in the morning. With the first stroke of the bell, I take my former seat, and occupy myself with turning over the leaves of a pocket-Bible that belongs to the slip. There is rather more confusion and noise of people coming in, than there was in the forenoon. Footsteps fall heavier, and pew-doors slam louder. A few old ladies, collected into two or three contiguous seats, for the purpose of enjoying, in the interval of worship, a little whispering consultation, have not yet intermitted their humming voices. Children, released from the Sunday school, come clattering along the aisles. Young gentlemen and ladies do not appear quite so stiff as they did in the morning, and are not so careful that their attitudes should be exactly perpendicular. The chorister also makes some remarks to the choir on the importance of keeping time, and on sundry other things, in a tone of mild command. All these little things go to make up a good deal of confusion in the house; all which, nevertheless, it is exceedingly pleasant to sit and listen to.

But the pastor enters; the bell ceases its tolling; the whispering old ladies disperse themselves to their respective seats; the deacons, who have been waiting for the minister on the steps, follow him in; and in less than a minute silence once more settles down on the assembly.

It may be fancy, but it strikes me that the choir sing a trifle louder and freer than before; that the female singers put in variations, which are not set down for them in the book, sliding graces, one might call them; all indicative of increased confidence in their own powers. However this may be, I am certain that the young damsel in the slip before me, whose face I have not seen, is mingling her voice in the harmony. I can almost hear it. But while I am watching to catch her tones, a universal shutting of books announces that the hymn is ended.

It may be fancy, too, but the preacher seems to me a thought less solemn than in the forenoon; perhaps a little warmer and more animated. Perhaps, too, the hearers are more restless and disposed to be critical. There is not that same hush of breathless listening. But they are sweet words; and the speaker appears to be conscious that he is not giving utterance to idle breath, so deliberately and thoughtfully do the lessons of good come from his lips. And this deliberation and thoughtfulness increase as he draws near the close of the sermon; till at last, his voice is sunk almost to a whisper; and our attention has to be closely riveted to catch the sounds. Now may be seen the whole congregation bending forward with strained eyes, and animated faces, drinking in the thoughts and precepts, and exhortations, as though for their lives. And when the conclusion of the whole matter comes, 'And thereby shall ye have hope of eternal life,' and during the deep pause which succeeds the enunciation of these words, an hundred long-drawn sighs may be heard, telling of relieved and lightened bosoms.

After the prayer, a hymn is read; a good old hymn, unmutilated from Watts, and we all rise to sing it. It is set to a good old tune too, one with which every body is familiar, and the first verse is carried roundly off. The second verse sets in heavier; the voices of the singers grow louder through use. The bass, which before was rather faint, now comes out with the power of a dozen organs, from fifty pairs of lungs that never knew what weakness was. The air, too, has cast off its timidity, and rises high and shrill; while the alto and tenor, each clear and distinct, fill up the intermediate space, and all four blend together harmoniously, so that no jar or dissonance is perceptible. The tide of song sways up and down, like the breathless rocking of the wave. The whole house is crowded with sound. The voices gush out and swell with measured movement; and while the different parts combine and unite, a mingled stream of harmony and praise is sent up toward the heavens. It is evident that the hearts of the singers are rising with their words. I can speak for myself, at least; I find it difficult to resist the current of enthusiasm; so I allow myself to be borne away; and, albeit somewhat unskilled in the gentle art of psalmody, into this grand hallelujah chorus I cast the strength of my voice with right good will.

[SONG.]

I.

A Philosopher once, to the mountain
Of Helicon came, to explore
The cause of the wonderful fountain
That gushed from its summit of yore.

II.

Disbelieving, until he had tried it,
That water the Fancy could raise,
Ere he tasted its freshness, he eyed it
With a most philosophical gaze.

III.

Then dipping his fore-finger in it,
He just wet the tip of his tongue;
He sipped and he sucked; in a minute
Beside it his full length he flung.

IV.

He swallowed his fill, O delicious!
Sure never was Chian like this!
He was drunk! yet the ass was ambitious
To find out the cause of his bliss.

V.

So he dug, all the morning, around it
With his long, philosophical paws;
Eureka! cried he; I have found it!
This black-looking root is the cause.

VI.

He pulled up the fibre; he smelt it,
And bit it, and kneeling again,
Kissed the liquid, and fancied he felt it
Had ceased to enliven his brain.

VII.

Home took he the plant, and sawed it asunder—
Analyzed it with acids and brine;
And found it at last, to his wonder,
Nothing more than the root of—a vine!

VIII.

Then he doubted, the more he reflected;
And the question to this day is moot,
If the grape-vine the fount had affected,
Or the fount gave its force to the fruit.

[THE DEVIL-TAVERN.]

A TALE OF TINNECUM

'The day being fair, and the sun shining bright,
I thought of Far-Rockaway, which causes me to write;
I thought of Cow-Neck which will ever be dear,
Though I should be away from there these full twenty year.
The place of one's birth he always thinks the best.
Though we should have to live there half clothed, and half dress,
What then must it be, to one in my case,
Who had whatever he wanted when I was into the place't?'

Copied from Mrs. Pettit's Album at Rockaway.

The winter had given a few premonitory symptoms, the winds beginning to come with a cutting edge from the north, the last flowers of the season having long dropped their disconsolate heads, where they had been cut down in their late bloom, and short icicles depending from the eaves on the frosty mornings. One by one, the charms which crown the country during so many months, its roses, its green-sward, its foliage, nay, even the melancholy tints of autumn were withdrawn, until all was bare and desolate, and there was nothing left of all the glorious scene, except to those who can bow down to Nature in her severest moods, and can admire the symmetry of the dismantled oak with as true a feeling as when its limbs were robed in green. Still can you see in its majestic trunk and faultless anatomy, why it bore its honors so gracefully. But the woods were literally stripped. Here and there a dry leaf, crumpled up, shook on the end of a limb with a palsied motion, producing a death-noise, not unlike the reiterated strokes of a small wood-pecker's bill upon the bark. For the rest, a thin layer of dry leaves whirling about among the skeleton shadows of trees, or gathered together in the hollows and the valleys, was all that remained of the tissue of that massive, overarching pall which stretched over the forest for miles. How contractile is the power of death! Caw! caw! caw! The crows flapped their jet black wings over the region of desolation; and hark to the roar of the distant sea! The beautiful shores of the Long-Island Sound, its promontories, coves, and recesses, so late the resort of the invalid or the idle; the trout-streams, the wide plains, the forests filled with sleek deer, as also the places of note upon the sea-shore, had become deserted. Montauk-Point jutted out into the sea more lonely than ever. Glen-Cove lost all its charms, and not the least were those it borrowed from thy presence, glorious Araminta! The Baron Von Trinkets swore that he would die for thee. The Pavilion at Rockaway, where beauty and fashion had so lately woven the dance, was forsaken in all its halls, corridors, and piazzas; while the old steward sat by night in the kitchen-wing, tapping his feet on the hearth to the remembered music of galopades, and voluptuous waltzes. It was, in fact, the latter end of November—a pretty season for an excursion into the Tinnecum bay!

Tertullian insisted upon my going with him to shoot black duck, which were said to be more plentiful than for many years, affording great sport. But water-parties, to my mind, cease to be desirable when coal fires have become agreeable. Nevertheless, ad sauromatas, to oblige a friend. So we overhauled lock, stock, and barrel, which had become rusty since snipe-shooting, and, busying ourselves a whole evening in screwing, unscrewing, oiling, and getting in order our implements to make war upon the black ducks, the morrow found us ready. Tertullian shook me by the shoulders as I lay softly pillowed, and in the midst of pleasant dreams. With a yawn and a groan I acknowledged the salutation, and looking out saw the stars yet shining in the sky. The morning air felt cold! cold! As I stood shivering in my long robes, I was ready to sacrifice my friendship for Tertullian, and to plunge again beneath the warm sheets, and recur to my happy dreams. The rolling of wheels over the frozen ground beneath the windows, and Cudjo's sharp reproaches to the mules, indicated that all parties were on the ground; and although I considered it almost as bad as fighting a duel at that unseasonable hour, I clenched my teeth with determination, as if to preclude the possibility of a shiver. In a few moments we were armed and equipped, provisions for the day were placed in the bottom of the wagon, and Cudjo drove us out on the commencement of the cheerless journey. My friend, lover as he was of aquatic pastimes, and wild-duck shooting, shrugged his shoulders as we passed over the bleak meadows. There had evidently been a fall of snow during the night, somewhere among the Highlands, to judge by the sharper edge of the winds. In the course of half an hour we arrived at a landing-place, where a small creek put up from the bay. Here two negro boatmen, from New-Guinea, a small African settlement in the neighboring woods, had consented to meet us, and row us out in their new sedge-boat, which was first called the Pumpkin-Seed, from some allusion to its shape, but afterward from their own names, The Sam and Jim. On arriving at the wharf nothing presented itself but the old mill, with its wheel encased in ice, and as far as the eye could reach, the bleak meadows and the tortuous creek, and the Tinnecum bay. But the black gentlemen who were to be our guides did not show their faces, but were probably with the rest of New-Guinea dreaming of clams and eels, or of the gala-day when their new boat, fresh and gaudily painted, was launched into the black waters, below the dam of the Three-Mile Mill. The 'Sam and Jim' lay high and dry upon the shore, chained, padlocked, and protected from the weather. It must be confessed, that the promise of the day's sport was small. With no Palinurus to guide us, and the wind blowing as if it came from an iceberg, the black ducks might take a new lease of their lives, for all the damage we should do them. Tertullian swore roundly, stamped his feet, and went raving round the old mill, which we tried to enter, but the doors were locked. Then getting upon a pile of mill-stones he gazed wistfully into all quarters of the horizon, and raising his trumpet voice as if he had been among the very huts of New-Guinea, called upon the delinquents, Sam and Jim. Still no human being appeared to offer assistance, and echo only answered 'Sam and Jim.' The sun began to appear well above the horizon, the tide was on the ebb; if a little more time were lost, it would be impossible to get over the bar, and return by night-fall. The miller's house stood near, whither we immediately hastened, and having aroused him by a volley of kicks against his door, asked his ghostly advice about an expedition into the bay. Joe Annis thanked us in language not very flowery for breaking his slumbers, and then telling us that his two boats, the 'Spasm' and 'Paroxysm,' (so named by some country doctor in that vicinity,) were a little way down creek, and that we might take either one, and row ourselves out, drew in his powdered head. Difficulties only serve to quicken the energies of men of nerve. 'Courage! courage! mon ami!' exclaimed my friend, wagging his haunches in the direction of the wharf in a great hurry. Tertullian was for ever speaking French and Latin. The first was tolerable, as far as it went, which was to the end of a very small vocabulary; but for the latter, Erasmus help us! it was of the canine species, except some few phrases, very pure, drawn right out from the body of the Roman authors. Of the latter was Quid agis? 'What are you about there? What are you doing—in the stern of the boat? Ohe! jam satis! Come, no more of your fun. Dic, age tibia. Wake up, and tune your pipes.' But then, the melancholy, barbarian ages succeeding, 'Miror quid diabolus faciemini sine Sam et Jimmo!'

On examining the boats, we found them not very well adapted to the purpose. They were rather small skiffs, and might be easily tilted over, or capsized in a squall. We took the Spasm. She was clean, tight, and ready to be launched; but the Paroxysm was in bad condition, full of mud, grass, clams, shells, broken rum-jugs, and decayed cucumbers. In a trice we had effected the launch, victualled the boat for a day's voyage, and seizing the oars pulled with great vigor and hearty determination. We had been both indifferently acquainted with the bay, knew its shores, and bottom, and the fishing-grounds which were once visited with success. But such knowledge acquired in school-boy days had become dim. It might be that the old land-marks were destroyed; for if a certain row of poplars which stood upon the plain had been cut down during the prevailing unpopularity of poplars, we might be puzzled to find the entrance of the creek upon our return. 'Courage! courage!' exclaimed Tertullian; 'range your eye along the summits of the salt hay-stacks, thence onward over the ridge of the old boat-house, and you will see the trees, with their dry and decayed limbs rattling aloft, like pipe-stems:

'Altas maritat populos.'

The broad expanse of the bay seemed to lie before us at a little distance, but the course of the stream was winding and ambiguous, often making a turn and bringing you back to nearly the same place, which by dint of laborious rowing you deemed you were leaving far in the back-ground. Thus, often in life, do we seek to arrive upon the scene of some expansive prospect, but that which seemed a little interval turns out to be a weary distance, to be overcome only by patient determination. The exercise of pulling at the oars sent warmth through our bodies, and made the blood tingle in all our limbs, although the flags upon the shores were glazed, and sharp icicles hung from the banks, which the sun had not yet power to dissolve. At last the shores began to widen, and we emerged into a broad basin, where, coasting warily for a while, we ventured upon another more expansive. Here we saw a loon, who screamed out when he saw the skiff, in great alarm; but no harm was done to him. Some pieces of ice were seen floating, not of any great size. Having pulled heartily thus far, we considered it 'about time' to take a small pull at the brandy-bottle. The sun was by this time pretty high up in the heavens; the day though cold was of an amber clearness; the black ducks pretty scarce; but other things promising well, Tertullian broke out into music; a jovial, marine song, of which he expected me to sustain a part in the chorus:

'Cheer up, my jolly boys,
In spite of wind and weather,
Cheer up, my jolly boys,
And——'

'Mehercle!' exclaimed he, breaking off suddenly, 'ecce duos oves!'

'Where?' replied I, in astonishment, looking up to the sky, and suspecting that he made some punning allusion to a few fleecy clouds.

'Two teal, by Jupiter!' said he, cocking his piece, and rising up in the boat with great eagerness. Looking in the direction to which he pointed, I saw the birds rising up and down on the rough waves, and occasionally bobbing their heads beneath the brine. There is a grace and sleek elegance which belongs to animals in their state of utmost wildness, that is incomparable. Swans in the tranquil lake, and kine in the richest pastures, are beautiful for the eye to rest on. But the bird which looks out from some high, extreme limb in the wood—even if it be the small, red robin, stretching out its long neck, and displaying an elegance of form, very different from its summer plumpness, ready to flap its wings at the merest crackling of a leaf, or approach of the distant shadow; the straggler from that long file of migratory birds, (how beautifully it undulates, and swerves from a rigid line in yon high aërial flight,) descending to bathe in the woodland swamp, and plunging its head deep into the waves as the quick eye of the sportsman, the flash, and the report are simultaneous; the stag listening with erect ear to the fall of far-off footsteps in the forest, and expressing in that tremulous air the full force of his incipient bound;

——'Non sine vano
Aurarum, et siliiæ metu;

these express an idea of ecstatic life and enjoyment, which it is difficult for the painter to depict.

Tertullian could not get a shot at the teal, for they went under, and never came up again, that we could discover. Nor was the loss of sport to be regretted, as, had he discharged his piece standing, heavily loaded as it was, the recoil would have been sufficient to upset the skiff. Such casualties are not infrequent. It was near this very place that Pomp Ruin, poor black! in his eagerness to shoot a wild duck, got kicked overboard, and went down, with all his sins upon his head; and as the colored clergyman truly observed, in improving the subject on the Sunday following: 'My brudren, he was never hëered of arterwards.' Coasting along still with resolution, we doubled Cape Round-your-hat, and it being high-noon, drew up on the beach at Rider's to dine. An hour and a half was suffered to elapse before we got off from this sterile place, and the afternoon beginning to wear away in divers cruisings, we thought it high time to begin to think of a return.

We had been resting on our oars for a few minutes, Tertullian ceasing from his French and Latin, and maintaining a profound silence. 'Hearken!' said he, suddenly rising up, in an attitude of intense listening; 'it is the surf bursting upon the shore!' I put down my ear, and heard the hollow, heavy roar, and booming of the breakers, rolling upon the beach at Rockaway. 'We are near the mouth of the inlet,' said he; 'pull for the point of yonder island, or we shall be carried out to sea.' I remembered a story told me by Captain Phibious, of the small schooner Sally Jane, who got carried out into the Gulf Stream, four or five hundred miles, without provisions, in which expedition all hands liked to have perished. Fear lent strength and vigor to our arms. Into what peril were we brought through the remissness of those irredeemable negroes Sam and Jim! With such good effect did we pull at the oars, that in a little while we struck the point of land, and leaped upon the shore in safety. 'Do you know where you are!' exclaimed Tertullian.

'Certainly not, except upon a desert strip of sand.'

'You are on Scollop Island.'

My blood froze in my veins. 'We are then,' said I, 'upon the dominions of Floys Boyo, and within the precincts of the Devil-Tavern.'

'The same,' answered he; 'let us draw up the boat.'

Scollop Island, whither we had now come, was a small, barren place, which lies just at the mouth of the inlet, opposite to the Rockaway beach. It consists of little hillocks of white sand, and intervening valleys, with here and there a few groves of pines, and gnarled oaks, whortleberry-bushes, and brambles, or whatever will grow on so unpropitious a site. Beside these, there is at any time little sign of life. Only one house or tenement was visible upon its highest point, before which the broken mast of some wrecked schooner was planted in the sand; and half way up jutted out a sign, on which was painted some figure, not intended to be human. Some beaks, figure-heads, and gilded ornaments, the relics of unfortunate ships, lay about, or were nailed over the doors. The house, it must be confessed, had never borne an excellent reputation. Gibbs and Wamsley had resorted to it frequently, and are said to have made some deposits of treasure in the sands of the island which have never yet been turned up. The boatmen who tarry there usually do so, for the purpose of some drunken spree too riotous and noisy for the main land. But the Devil-Tavern had at least one merit, for it discarded all semblance of hypocrisy, and did not even assume to itself the vestige of a good name. It may be said that the present one was forced upon it; at any rate it had borne it a long time, and put forth no protest to vindicate the reputation of the house. The virtuous were afraid of it, and preferred, if carried thither in some summer excursion, to wander about the hot beach, rather than seek the comparative coolness of its walls. It had received its name for many reasons, any one of which might be deemed sufficient. A hundred years ago its founder was a man of such outrageous character, and withal so successful in his career, that it was thought the very Devil helped him. He was leagued with wicked landsmen, who, when they had accomplished their nefarious plans, sailed hither, and revelled jollily until the storm blew over. Many a bottle of pure wine was cracked in their convivialities, very different from the vile and burning fluids now served up at the bar. But Cargills was at last hanged, having been taken unawares at the Anchor Tavern, in New-York, whither he went when oppressed with ennui, and to get his feelings in tune. A set of landlords succeeded him, any one of whom had made society too hot to hold them. At last a certain humorist who happened to be there, snatching a pot of paint one day, which was near at hand to paint the bows of a schooner, clambered up by the aid of a ladder, and inscribed upon the sign-board, with great freedom of brush, a picture of that ancient gentleman, the Devil. He painted him rampant, with all that dismal aspect which is usually attributed to him, with hell-flames bristling from his forked tongue, his tail coiled up and superfluous, while in the back-ground was an extent of highly picturesque country, whence he had just issued, seeking whom he might devour. The semblance must have been correct, since by those that came there, the recognition was pleasurable and immediate. Indeed, the frequenters of the place for the last fifty years had been distinguished by the harsh term of hellicat devils. Latterly, nothing specific had been alleged against the Inn, only some murderous suspicions connected with the gangs which frequented it, and the very unsatisfactory character of a bad name.

The present landlord, Floys Boyo, came here originally from Thimble Islands, and managed to gain a miserable subsistence throughout the year by the entertainment of strangers, and the sale of strong waters. Of whatever else he did for a living, there are no witnesses. We now proposed to make his acquaintance, and we could have wished under better auspices, unless his hospitality would overflow toward those thrown by accident upon his shores at an inclement time. Objects were waxing dim in the declining light, and the 'wind of the winter night' blew dismally around the coasts of Scollop Island. We drew up the skiff upon the land, took our over-coats and fowling-pieces, and went in the direction of the house, along the ill-beaten tracks, with heads bent down to shield us from the sharpness of the wind. Tertullian received my reproaches for bringing me upon the expedition, and for conducting the ship into such a harbor. The appearance of the house, upon a nearer aspect, was eminently cheerless, without tree or dried bush, or enclosure, or domestic animals, or any thing to remind one of life, or cheerfulness, or hope. The wind had blown the white sand to the very threshold of the door, while, scarcely visible in the declining day, the Devil looked down upon us with a malignant leer. A dim light appeared in front at the windows, through the only panes of glass the house could boast. Nearly all were shingled over, or otherwise stopped. The barking of a dog would not have been unwelcome, though it had been a snarl. It was a place into which one feels an instinctive reluctance to intrude.

There are some houses which by their very air and aspect, as plainly as if characters of hospitality were written upon the lintels, extend to the stranger the undoubted welcome of a home. Others are guarded in all their avenues by their own repulsiveness. We inspected the premises narrowly, examined the house on all sides, as if the entrance were doubtful, then came again in front, and looked up at the eaves. A little smoke curled out of the chimney, indicating the presence of small warmth within. Tertullian set up a strong claim upon the sympathy of the convent, by hammering against the door with his musket. A response came from within like the howl of a wild beast aroused from his lair, an outburst of compound curses, unknown to the every-day swearer. 'Floys Boyo is in his tantrums; knocking is too gentle an etiquette at the Devil-Tavern; he must be mollified with hard words, and subdued with counter-oaths. Follow me,' said Tertullian; 'it is but a specimen of his airs and graces.'

Pushing into the room, we found it black and dismal, and all things in correct keeping. The smell of gin filled it like a fume. In one corner a small greasy enclosure of boards, breast-high, likewise shut off by pendant pickets from the wall above, formed that spiritual sanctum, usually called the bar. Behind it were a number of dripping glasses, whose only washings were from the dregs of those little corpulent barrels, and whose only wipings were from the foul lips of the frequenters of the Devil-Tavern. An irregular file of bottles and cracked decanters eked out the remaining crockery. The beams and walls of the room overhead were darkened with smoke; the floor was filthy; and greasy, unwashed vessels lay about in profusion, among the remnants of chairs, and broken benches, and the last timbers of a cradle, of which the baby was gone. Three men moped in the fire-place, thrusting the heels of their gigantic boots into the coals, muttering and cursing in cheerless companionship. They were without coat, vest, or neckcloth, their red shirts were open upon their necks and hairy bosoms, their marred faces, lip-corners streaming with tobacco, harsh beards, and shaggy heads, made them look like a group of infernals.

Floys Boyo, the captain of this delectable crew, was distinguished from the rest by a scar or gash, which from the corner of his eye came down his right cheek in a deep gulley as far as his nose, where it branched off, and cut his upper lip into two parts, which had been ill patched together.

'We're going to lodge here,' said Tertullian, walking up and slapping Boyo upon the back.

'H—ll!' replied the other, not pretending to move from his seat, while the rest of the company rolled up their eyes in silence.

'Yes; and want some south-side clams for supper; there's bread enough in the boat.'

'You won't get no supper, and there's very little lodging for you. Do you think we're as dead as door-nails, d—n you, and as deaf as stones? Hammer the door down next time, will you? Bullion, call the old woman.'

It was evident that Boyo meant to entertain us, notwithstanding his threatening and sullen aspect; and although he fulfilled his word by making no preparations for supper, yet a chamber was getting ready for our repose in the cockloft of the Devil-Tavern. This, in the inclemency of the season, and the want of another house or place of shelter on the island, we considered a piece of princely hospitality, worthy to be paid with gold. Ensconced within the jambs of the fire-place (how different from the blazing, hospitable hearth of the farm-house!) we read the horrid physiognomies around us, and did not derive much comfort from the perusal. Silence reigned in the company. The men had arrived at that brutal stage of the process of intoxication, when the excitement of the brain having passed away, there comes a sullen mood. A host of worse spirits take possession of the man, which, if they are not so turbulent, are of a more fiendish nature. The dull eye, the downcast look, the moping silence, show forth the vile temper which lays its vindictive hands on a woman, and speaks harsh words to the wife of one's bosom. Then come lust, murder, revenge—the passions which vaunt themselves less furiously at other times, and the slow working resolve of the mutinous.

The night became colder, and the fire more dim. Floys Boyo ordered Bullion peremptorily to fetch some 'kindlings.' The latter did not disobey the command, but went out grumbling, and returned with some sticks, and wreck-wood, and by the aid of the paint which adhered to them, a more cheerful flame was produced. But it only served to make the darkness more visible; to bring into stronger relief the bar, the cobwebbed ceiling, the filth and squalid wretchedness of the apartment. An uncomfortable feeling of insecurity increased upon me, notwithstanding Tertullian's perpetual 'Courage!' and'Cras magnum iterabimus aquor.' Extremes are always suggestive of their opposites. I thought of the cheerful study at home; the fire blazing; the faces of friends; the hot-pressed volume, the Magazines for the month. There, by the side of Blackwood, brought in violent haste by the last steam-packet, lay the Old Knick., first in our affections, whose plain exterior of blue but ill bespeaks the luxury within; whose pages, co-rivals of the Alpine flakes, are never stained by impurity; but there the old man chirrups with the vivacity of youth, and the young has managed to assume the wisdom of the sage. Both meet together in loving cheerfulness, and the ancient sits in his gubernatorial chair, and puffs the long pipe in that dreamy atmosphere. Let the old Dutch spirit reign for ever in 'our beloved regions of Manahatta.'

A prisoner for the night in that dreary place, I felt as if I were a thousand miles from the abodes of civilization; and as one naturally does, amused myself by examining with intense curiosity the most indifferent object which served to remind me of more congenial places. I kept my eye long fixed on the lock of my fowling-piece, which had the word 'London,' and the maker's name engraved upon it; then looked in the bottom of my cap, and was peculiarly interested with the vignette which accompanied the manufacturer's name; and an old almanac seemed to link me with the literary world, although it was out of date by several years. The pictured little page, and calculations of eclipses which had come off, and gone into the musty record of by-gone events, the signs of the zodiac, the prophecies of wind and weather, the old maxim of 'early to bed and early to rise' and the way to make an apple-pudding, these had a fresh interest and a zest hardly to be equalled by Bulwer's last novel. I felt that there must be an 'imperfect sympathy' between Scollop Island and the great world of literature, art, and learning.

But a deeper sense of satisfaction and security arose from the presence of woman. A fair face and a fragile form glanced occasionally across the apartment where we were seated, but retired, driven back by harsh words and vile language. It was the wife of Floys Boyo. She bore about her the marks of former beauty, although altered in all its lines by a prevailing expression of wo, but she still performed the duties of a wife with unflinching patience, though coarse and cruel treatment had long since rendered it a heartless task. Floys Boyo married her in the comparative innocence of his youth, before he had yet blunted all the kindly feelings of his nature. He had taken her from the abounding plenty of a farm-house, and from parents who loved her with the tenderness which falls to the lot of an only child. Afterward, as is always the case with a drunkard, he cherished her no longer with affection; dragged her about from one comfortless abode to another; and at last, on this desert place, cut her off from the last link which attached her to her friends. Still she adhered to him, when she might have returned to the bosom of her family; so hard is it to shake the fidelity which is a component part of a woman's nature, and so often in this world are the extremes of disposition linked together, the fierceness of the vulture with the enduring gentleness of the dove!

It was not until a late hour that we left the kitchen of the Devil-Tavern, and retired to our apartment for the night; for the prospect of sleep did not bring with it much consolation, although extremely weary. Floys Boyo conducted us, leading the way up the steps of a perpendicular ladder to a landing, whence he stepped into a cockloft, set down the lamp on an empty barrel, and departed with an oath, grumbling about the trouble which we had given him, and wishing us in the Rockaway surf. 'He is an atrocious devil,' said Tertullian; 'let us inspect the den, while the lamp holds out to burn.'

We found neither lock, catch, nor fastening of any description; and to have our slumbers supervised by any of the amiable crew below, was not pleasant. Having tortured ingenuity a little, we took an eel-spear and a broken oar which lay on the beams beneath the roof, crossed them, and secured them against the door by the aid of some tarred ropes, which were likewise at hand. Then we made a broken barb of the spear serviceable by jamming it violently between the floor and the lower part of the door; after which we lugged a heavy old chest, and deposited it, together with whatever movables were to be found in the room. This done, we threw ourselves down upon the straw in all our clothes, drew over us our cloaks, and over these the blankets which belonged to the bed, and placing our fowling-pieces by our side, abandoned ourselves to the protection of a kind Providence. In less than half an hour Tertullian snored prodigiously, and had I been stretched on clover, fanned with the sweetest airs of summer, and without a care to ruffle my tranquillity, I never could have slept a wink with such an uproarious fellow beside me. As it was, there were other causes which kept me wakeful. For, beside the fears which might assail one at midnight in such a solitude, it was dismal to hear the winds raving about the house; the bricks tumbling from the chimney and rolling with a hollow noise down the roof; the blast now screaming in your ear and instantly heard afar off, as if it had gone off to join the troops of the winds; the rattling of doors and loosened window-frames, and the creaking on its rusty hinges and slam-banging of the sign of the Devil-Tavern. To this might be added the moaning of pine trees as their heavy tops swayed in the grove, the plashing of the waves on the still shore, the roll and confusion of the breakers at Rockaway. How impatiently I counted the hours, and longed again for the light of day, that scatters fears and vagaries with the brooding shades, and imparts fresh life, and courage, and determined zeal.

It must have been half past two o'clock, or thereabout, in the morning, when, being all on the alert, I was sure I heard a movement in the house. A sound came from below stairs like the gruff voices of men engaged in low conversation. It kept dying away as the winds exceeded it in loudness, and then it came back monotonous, and was continued several minutes without cessation. Then a door opened, and a confused whispering succeeded, after which, slowly, and with a creaking noise, I heard steps, one by one, ascend the rungs of the ladder; and springing up on my elbow, my heart thumped so furiously, and my brain whirled in such confusion, that for a moment I could hear nothing. But a bar of light coming through the crevice in the partition, flashed across the wall. Then there was an evident pressure and force applied to the door, which it resisted well. I sprang out of bed, pressed my eye to a crevice in the wall, and saw the red-flannel shirt of one of the men; then rushing back, I shook Tertullian violently by the shoulders. He rose up a moment, uttered something impatiently, and fell back into bed. 'Tullian!' said I, shaking him energetically, 'Tullian! Tullian! up, for heaven's sake! we shall be—(here I placed my mouth close to his ear, and whispered)—murdered!'

He pressed his fists to his eyes, and sprang upon his heels. I never knew him wanting in an emergency. He rallied his senses, and understood my suspicions in an instant. He understood them, and supposed them ill-founded. But as we stood with our fowling-pieces in our arms, the violence against the door was continued, with angry imprecations, by those without. It was evident that the pressure of the whole gang was upon it, and it could not hold out long. What could we do against their numbers, and with so contracted a place for battle? 'Up with the window and out of it!', exclaimed Tertullian. As he uttered the words, he sprang toward the sash, uplifted it, and told me to leap. I set my foot upon the sill, crouched down in order to squeeze through the narrow aperture, and sprang in safety upon the sands below. The distance was not very great, but it was a leap in the dark. Before I could look up for him, Tertullian was by my side, the sash slamming down as he leaped, and the broken glass tinkling in little pieces at our feet. At the instant a crash, an onset was heard above; oars, eel-spears, chest, chairs, and the whole barricade must have given way, a light streamed into the room and lit up the casement, shadows flitting about; a shout and confused mingling of voices met our ears; we could distinguish those of Floys Boyo and his men: 'The birds have flown!' 'To the shore! to the shore!' exclaimed Tertullian, grasping my arm, and attempting to hurry me along.

It was very dark, and I remember that we rushed through the deep sands in company with frantic haste, never turning round, now cast down by getting our feet entangled in briers, then panting on against the cold night wind. It seemed as if our pursuers were very near us, nay, almost at arm's length, outnumbering us, with the weapons of death in their hands, and the only remedy was to flee, flee for our very lives! Already I imagined the grasp of Floys Boyo upon my throat, and the death-struggle near. Life, with its delightful memories, its hopes of the future, the loves and affections which were in store for me, a host of ideas and emotions rushed through my brain with the rapidity of characters perused upon the same page. There was a sudden and intense conception of the preciousness of life, and the agony of losing it; and persisting in the chase, I felt as one does who labors under a horrid night-mare, and is pursued by phantoms or fiends, while his limbs refuse to do their office, and his shrieks are inaudible murmurs, which die away in the utterance. Oh, my sisters! my fair cousins! dear, and beautiful betrothed! would to God I had never come to Scollop Island! Onward, onward we went, scarce guided by the dim star-light. 'Tullian, Tullian, I can go no farther; we can never reach the water's edge!' Scarce had I spoken when the ground gave way beneath us, we plunged forward, and sank into a hollow twelve or fifteen feet. Breathless and wearied, we lay together in the sand, with our fowling-pieces by our side. We were in a sort of cavern, where the earth caving in stood around in semi-circular walls, and was slightly arched above us. The place was sheltered from the northern blast, and a pine grove partly shielded it from the icy breath which came over the waves, while the sun had shone all day upon its sands.

Were we pursued by the gang?—or had my fears as well as my ears deceived me. 'Hush!' whispered Tertullian; 'do you hear voices? Here they come! Lie perfectly close; if the worst comes to the worst——' At the instant a clamor was heard behind us, as if a half a dozen men were calling to each other from different points; it came nearer, and ever and anon the oaths of the crew were borne with horrid distinctness to our ears. Floys Boyo's hoarse voice called his men to follow him to the shore. They passed round the hollow where we lay buried, through the pine grove, and so down to the water's edge, where their lanterns kept flashing about as they ran upon the sands with a vain search, and we heard the hollow tramp of their feet, as they leaped upon a sedge-boat which lay anchored near by. We examined our locks and percussion-caps, and lay silently, looking up at the stars, in painful doubt and suspense, as to what issue was at hand; and unwilling to part with our 'sweet lives.'

How dreary and disconsolate were those moments! What a contrast with the present, the scene which I had witnessed only three evenings before; lights, and voluptuous music, beauty, and the dance; now Scollop Island, Floys Boyo and his chosen men, and above us the cold sky, about us the howling winds, and perpetual roar and confusion of the sea. Hark! that was a woman's voice! A scream! Inarticulate sounds come up from the shore, as if another boat well manned had arrived. They are on the return to the Devil-Tavern. They approach us; now they are by the pine grove; their indistinct forms are visible by the light of the lanterns; Bullion stood there in a horrible tableau! 'To Bone Cavern! to Bone Cavern!' we heard them say, but the wind blew the remaining words away. 'Tullian! Tullian! now comes the trial! Here they are!' murmured I, leaning my head upon his shoulder. 'Stand fast! stand fast!' replied he. We held our hands upon the triggers of our fowling-pieces. The men stood upon the bank directly above us, causing the loose sand and gravel to roll about us, and bury us still deeper, while the twigs and bushes were now and then illuminated by the dancing lights which glittered upon the ends of our guns.

It seemed at that moment that my heart, which had been fluttering so long and fast, became perfectly calm, and wound up by the excitement of the crisis which had at last come. I lay there, uncertain, yet ready and composed, listening intently to every word which they said. While I ardently awaited their movements, they turned their backs upon the place where we lay, and moved off; the light of the lanterns disappeared; their voices becoming more and more indistinct, at last died away; and except the waves which plashed upon the shore, there reigned a deep silence: we were comparatively safe. We drew the sands around us, and lying close together in our coats composed ourselves for the night. In a little while Tertullian snored; and I myself, overwrought with excitement, fell fast asleep. It was a sleep without dreams; and when we awoke the sun had risen, and was shining into our eyes. We sprang from our resting-place, clambered to the summit of the bank, and looked around us in the direction of the Devil-Tavern. There hung its sign, still creaking in the breeze, but not a sign of life appeared around it. Its inmates must have resigned themselves to slumber. It was a bright day, and the solitary island looked pleasant. We ran to the shore, pushed off the skiff which lay safely in the place where we had drawn it, seized the oars, and pulled merrily. The breeze blew cold, but refreshing, and the sun glanced over the waves. We were full of life and vigor, delighted with the idea of a safe return. In a little while we paused to release some choice spirits which were imprisoned in a bottle of old Otard. Tertullian poured forth a volume of pure Latinity, and again a chorus was heard over the waves which might have roused Floys Boyo and his crew:

'Cheer up, my lively lads,
In spite of wind and weather,
Cheer up, my lively lads,
And——'

The 'Spasm' shot over the waves with the speed of light; the shores faded in the distance; our ancient adversary the Devil was lost in his pictured proportions; and with a light heart we bade farewell to Scollop-Island, and to the hospitalities of the Devil-Tavern.

[AN EPITAPH.]

All that could suffer change and fade
Of one 't were sin to weep,
Deep in this narrow bed is laid
In everlasting sleep.

The grassy turf was never spread
Above a gentler breast;
O! bitter, bitter tears were shed,
When she was laid to rest.

Her praise might partial friendship swell
With not unseemly pride;
But this were vain—enough to tell,
She lived, and loved, and died.

James Aldrich.

New-York, June, 1843

[JUNE.]

BY HANS VON SPIEGEL.

Sweet June, the loveliest child of all the year!
With quickened life I hail thy slow return,
And feel my torpid soul within me burn,
As on the hill-side's verdant slope appear
The well-known flowers that mark thy presence near.
And not alone am I in loving thee!
For Nature dons her richest livery
When thou appearest; with a softer blue
The sky pavilions earth; the forest's hue
Is fresher; and the brooks more merrily
Gurgle their slender, changeful melody.
Were there a world where thou didst ever reign,
And I, alone, could reach it. I would fain
Dwell there for aye; nor sigh for earth again!

June, 1843

[CÀ ET LÀ.]

BY THE FLÂNEUR.

It is the beginning, the premier pas qui coute, in all compositions. Once started, there is no difficulty in proceeding; but how to begin! Shall we borrow of the prolific James?

'Upon a lovely morning in November, that season of the year when the woods have doffed their summer green to robe themselves in sombre russet, two horsemen were seen riding down a glade of one of those noble old forests which are still to be met with in some parts of England. The elder of the two, a fine, soldier-like figure, sat his horse,' etc., etc. And there we will leave him, and look out for our own beginning. Strange that a chapter on this subject is nowhere to be found in any book on rhetoric or criticism. For our part we are determined not to begin at all for the present, but to propound a number of queries suggested to us by the name of the exuberant novelist above mentioned.

First, then: Why are tears always called 'pearly drops?' Would not that definition apply better to drops of milk? Lands have been said to flow with milk, but never did the wildest romancer assert that the lachrymal duct in the human subject was a milky-way.

Then, why does the chevelure of dark-haired persons always resemble the 'raven's wing?' Why not his tail-feathers, occasionally, for the sake of variety? Or a crow's wing, a black-bird's wing? Or why not say, 'Dark as the wool on negro's poll?'—or as the mane of a bay horse?—or 'as black as my hat?' Is it absolutely necessary that it should always be a raven's wing?

When you say, 'cherry lips,' do you particularize sufficiently? Some cherries are yellow, some black. Should you not say 'red cherry lips? If any 'young orphan' happens to be engaged in novel-writing when cherries are in season, let him place two in juxta-position, and remark what a mouth such a pair of labia would make! Why are these cherry lips always slightly parted? Does not this give that stupid expression which the French call 'bouche béante?

Why are all necks, not bull-necks, 'swan-like?' Why does swan-like in necks mean beautiful and well-proportioned, and crane-like abominably extended, when the neck of a crane is no longer than that of a swan? Why are handsome noses always 'chiselled?' Why are fingers always 'taper?' And finally, for we must stop somewhere, why are beauties 'lovelier far in tears?' Did swollen eyes, bound with red, and nose pinkish in tinge at its extremity, ever improve the appearance of any mortal since the flood?

As it is not fair to destroy without creating something to supply the place of the destroyed, we take the liberty of showing our own ideal in stories:

'Upon a crimson sofa, in a darkened room, sits a lovely lady. Bright are her eyes as gas-lights in a shop-window; dark her hair as Day and Martin's best; and her red lips contrast with her white skin as do the red stripes with the white in Stewart's peppermint candy. Salt tears trickle from her eyes as fall the drops from an umbrella in a gentle November drizzle; and James's last novel lies unnoticed upon her lap. Why sits the lovely lady on the crimson sofa? And why does she rest her pensive and pomatum'd brow upon her embroidered handkerchief?'

That we flatter ourselves is an exordium, over which a discerning public may hang entranced.

'This young lady was hight Liner, Catherine Julia Liner. She wept for love of Shuffleshank, her inconstant beau.

'For one whole season Shuffleshank, whose soul, if he had any, was in his toes, hovered about Miss Liner, and attended her every where. He waltzed with her night after night, (and Shuffleshank twirled divinely,) and in the pauses of the dance he wiped the perspiration from his face, and with his touching and tender eyes,

'Gazed on the fair,
Who caused his care,
And wiped and looked, wiped and looked,
Wiped and looked, and wiped again,'

until her parents and herself were quite certain of an offer. He certainly owed her one. She deserved some compensation for listening to his interminable stories, which were as monotonous as long. So celebrated a narrator was he, that his friends, when endeavoring to give each other an idea of some distance traversed, would say, 'It was one of Shuffleshank's stories,' or two stories. Sometimes unfortunate men could tell of a six-story walk, and these were looked upon as persons of great strength and vast powers of endurance. But the heartless, ungrateful Shuffleshank allowed the mercury to descend in the thermometer of his affections for Miss Liner, and gradually his attentions grew colder and colder, until they sunk below zero and became neglect. But the faithless one did not long survive his treachery. He broke his wind in attempting to finish his tenth story that day, and expired soon after suddenly. He was discovered lying on his back, his toes turned out, and his head resting on a volume of Cotillons à quatre mains. His executors found among his papers the first sheet of a pamphlet on his favorite science, waltzing, dated only a few days before his decease.

You will pardon us, friend Knickerbocker, for giving your readers one or two original rules of so great a professor:

'Rule I. The cavalier should endeavor to waltz with women of a suitable size. The relative test is, that the noses of the couple be on a level.

'Rule II. He should put his right arm as far round the lady's waist as possible, and draw her toward him with the other hand, so that the noses before mentioned shall be not more than half an inch apart.

'Rule III. In case the lady should be inclined to jump, he must hold her down to the floor by pressing firmly upon her tournure.'

Society has indeed suffered a sad loss by his untimely death. But before we go any farther with our story, we will give a crow-quill croquis of the career of Miss Catherine Liner, down to the period of Shuffleshank's catastrophe.

'Miss Liner was of a good family: her pa, a retired merchant, with some tincture of the humanities, and she herself well educated; that is, she knew enough Italian to say pesch'e; enough German for 'es ist warm;' and enough French for 'Oh, vee.' Music she loved to distraction. True, she sometimes nodded at a concert, but then it was only to beat the time, and when awakened by a crash, she would shake her head in languid ecstasy, and sigh out a sentimental 'ah!' Or, if the nature of the air required it, she could shout in a voice sonorous as a cricket's: 'Divine!' 'magnifique!' 'grandioso!' or the hardest word she might remember out of any language. The gentlemen in waiting caught the cue; and men who had not ear enough to keep time when dancing, were unintelligibly scientific in allegros and andantes, and made frequent and familiar allusions to Hummel, Meyerbeer, Beethoven, and Weber. We ourselves must plead guilty of claiming an acquaintance where we never had an introduction. How true is that saying of Fuller: 'The best of God's children have a smack of hypocrisy!'