the nerves of a stout man. But to see him cut a stick was more refined, and wholly divested of the disagreeable. How he would survey the whole length and shape of it with his eye, turning his head sideways, and squinting along the irregular surface, so that his face looked like a squeezed lemon. Then grasping the large buck handle in a fist which weighed about two pounds, he made a bold gash to the very neighborhood of his knee-pan; and the coiled up shavings rolled away as a hair curls up to a woolly shortness in the flame of a candle. How he would disport with the softness of the wood, and carve it into any shape he pleased, though it might be a chain of many links, as a great writing-master amuses himself with the letters of the English alphabet, and out of the capitals cuts the most fantastic shapes; sometimes an elephant erecting his trunk, at others the expanded wings of an American eagle.

But it was by no means the destiny of this great original to sit all day on a gate, after the spoiled boy's ambition. He filled a pedlar's cart with 'things' and started off on the grand tour of bargaining and swapping. The country was not well settled, and he had not been an hour in the wilderness before he was waltzing about with a wolf. Shortly after he got entangled in the rapids of a river, and seemed to stand no more chance than a feather in a hurricane, but the next day he was seen walking calmly on the banks picking up his wooden bowls. He could scarcely clamber a tree without meeting a wild-cat at every limb. There is a letter written 'to home,' recorded on the ninety-fifth page, first volume, of Pixon:

It's clear, cold mounting air,' says he, 'this mornin', as your brother sets down this mornin', to write a letter to you this mornin'. Here's hopin' the church to Fulham is flourishin'. I want you to sell my oats at the going price. Could you tell me where I'd be liable to dispose of about twenty pound o' putty? It don't stick good enough to sell along roads that like as not I'm comin' back on. Your brother has had a great deliverance from a bear lately, for which the LORD be praised!'

Then follows a story too strange to be transcribed, and which would destroy the credit of our remaining narrative. I do not know that it would go ahead of Mr. Buckingham's lion stories and long yarns in general with which he entertained the good people of the States. But as an individual, maintaining a character for moral rectitude, I think it best to be careful—it's best to be careful. Sometimes it is a great deal tougher not to do a thing than to do it. I had much rather tell this bear story than to let it alone; but some might shake their heads and give me fair notice to tell the like of that to the marines, as the tropical savage did who listened to a description of ice; and others might go away, refusing to return again, just as old Alphasibæus did when he listened to Sicyon's lecture on the times of Troy. We all know what happened to Corabel in Warlock's account of the Zimri, a warning to all men to avoid Munchausen's epitaph:

'HERE he LIES
Kill'd by Fate:
For he was a great
LIAR.'

I wish I could describe the Yankee's wagon, for that's as true as any fact on record. It was an airy-looking thing, containing for the most part compact boxes, and the principal department of it was devoted to buttons. A feature in it was a large black dog, wearing a tin collar, who sat in front, particularly trained to his duty. Whenever the wagon started anew he ran before, vociferously barking, and jumping up at the horses' heads. When the Yankee-Doodle jumped off his seat, he jumped on, and when the Yankee-Doodle jumped on, he jumped off. On arriving at a house his master would dismount, and taking a large bunch of keys from his pocket, apply one to a padlock in the rear of the wagon; when instantly a lid would fall and show a folding-door, well locked. On opening this, a set of drawers presented themselves containing boxes, in their turn containing buttons, in many of which a man might see his eyes. The remaining fixtures were equally curious. The top was devoted to the department of brooms, and the front to wooden bowls.

There is always an obscurity hanging about the great men who live in any heroic age of history, the first possessors of those great bumps and developments, which partially inherited, are the foundations of national character. The history of Hercules is wrapped up in much fable. The first Yankee-Doodle disappeared somehow, as he was travelling over the Green Mountains, in a heavy fog or mist, which enveloped his wagon so thoroughly that his departure seemed like an apotheosis. He was never heard of afterward; and all that is farther known of him can be testified to by all NewEngland: he left a family.

Then sleep on now and take your rest,
Ye saints whom JESUS' love hath blest :
Dawn on the eastern mountains stands!
At sunrise ye shall burst your bands,
On glorious wing shall soar,
And sing your morning song before the Throne,

Where Night and Sleep shall cease, and Death be known

Burlington, Vt., Dec. 24, 1845.

VOL. XXVII.

No more!

17

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF FASHIONABLE LIFE.

BY PETER SCHEMIL.

TREVIRANUS, TO COLERIDGE.

'ICH habe gerschen was (Ich weiss das.) Ich nicht würde geglaubt haben auf ihrer erzählung.' 'I have seen what I am certain I would not have believed on your telling.'

MRS. JULIA SMITH, the ambitious lady of Mr. John Smith, had received the last congé of the last guest of a very large party of those who formed the self-constituted aristocracy of the great city of Babylon the Less. The varnished and conventional smile of society had vanished from her fair face, and she stood in the centre of one of her splendid suite of rooms, gazing with an honest expression of wretchedness at the spots and puddles of spermaceti which had descended from her numerous candelabras and brackets, to the great injury of her rich carpets and damask-covered sofas and chairs, and to the utter ruin of many of the fine dresses worn by her 'dear five hundred fashionable friends.'

The party was the result of long-matured plans, and was the first she had given since Mr. Smith had, at her entreaty, purchased their splendid house situated on Grosvenor Square, of all the neighborhoods of Babylon the Less, deemed the most select; and which had been fitted up with every luxury, which taste had suggested and which money could procure. Her husband was at the moment bowing out the last of their guests, and she dreaded the moment of their meeting. It had been her desire to rank with the upper ten thousand' which had led him into all the expenditures and sacrifices of his own tastes and simple habits, all of which had the point of culmination in this her first party, and which she had hoped would have been the bright apex of her ambition.

Mr. Smith entered with a look of utter disgust and weariness of the position he had been compelled to sustain. Well, my dear, this is the brilliant party, that was to have been! I should say it has been a splendid failure, but for the strange eclipse, which shed its disastrous twilight upon us all, before your party had but commenced their supper.

'My dear,' replied the lady, in tones which deprecated his anger, who would have believed so many lamps could have diminished in light so rapidly? They were lighted entirely too soon.'

'But,' said Mr. Smith angrily, 'there were your candles pouring down streams of lava in all directions; surely they must have been made of lard instead of wax.'

'No, dearest, the candles were of the best of spermaceti, and such as is every where used,' replied Mrs. Smith.

'And too,' exclaimed the irritated gentleman, how infernally hot your house has been! I believe the devil himself has been heating the furnaces.'

6

'My dearest husband,' said Mrs. Smith, I am distressed to see you so unhappy. The rooms have been overheated. Patrick, with his usual stupidity, thought he must give our guests a warm reception, and this is the cause of all our mishaps.'

To have wasted your friends was to be sure bad enough,' said Mr. Smith, with a most cruel sneer, but to have basted them with spermaceti was indeed to 'snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.''

Alas! my love, have mercy upon me!' cried out Mrs. Smith. 'I am not to blame: why make me to feel myself in fault? It was all in consequence of the mischief of those Misses Van Tromp, who went about fanning themselves, as if they were dying for fresh air, and begging those young fops of theirs to draw down the upper sashes, which of course occasioned a draught of air, and set the candles a-running. Surely 't was no fault of mine; and though I regret the injury done my guests, yet they must have seen who was to blame, and that I was the greatest sufferer.'

'Excepting myself, if you please,' said Mr. Smith. It was, to be sure, quite a scene, and was not without its good hits; and I would not have objected to have been one of the sufferers any where else but here.'

'My dear, what could have set them all a-dripping so near the same moment?' inquired the wife.

Why,' said Mr. Smith, 'the same cause usually produces the same effects. There was no miracle wrought to save us this evening, and so the same current of air which filled one cup of your candelabras full, filled all; and it would have been as impossible to have escaped a hail-storm as this shower of grease. Mont Morris came up to me soon after the flood had subsided, and the sperm had cooled, and while I was expressing my regret at his misfortunes, seeing his shoulders all white with sperm, and which he bore with his usual kindness and good humor,.Mrs. Vandam tapped him on the elbow as she was passing, and said with a sneering laugh, 'My dear General, you wear your epaulets this evening.'

'Well, my dear,' said Mrs. Smith, she was well repaid for her ill nature; for when all seemed safe, and the servants had repaired the mischief by new candles, one had been overlooked, and she was standing under it, when down came a stream of sperm, spangling her beautiful dress with spots.'

'Yes!' said Mr. Smith; and do you know how she repaid me for the glance of satisfaction she doubtless saw my face must have expressed! She whispered to a lady near me, and quite a stage aside, it was too, I verily believe this is a contrived affair to compel us to renew our dresses at his fine store. It has the merit of novelty, and I shall certainly patronize him.'

'Alas! my dear, she is so cynical, do n't mind her. She is but one of the many.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Smith, but when the many are in a like condition, they feel alike. And at your supper too, I was compelled to hear the gibes and jests on all sides; and among them was that Corypheus of fashion, as he deems himself no doubt, gazing down the