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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by

ABEL TOMPKINS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY

GEORGE A. CURTIS;

NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

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ADVENTURES

OF

ELDER TRIPTOLEMUS TUB.

CHAPTER I.

In which the reader hath the honor of an introduction to Mr. Tub, and is made acquainted with the scene of his very marvellous adventures.

If it shall ever be the reader's hap to fall in with a personage exactly five feet high, in his shoes; whose weight shall be exactly two hundred and forty, avoirdupois; and whose shadow on a wall shall reach to exactly half the altitude when he lies on his back as when he stands on his feet: if, as to variety of hue, the nose of that same individual shall resemble a conglomerate specimen of mineralogy; if his upper and nether person shall be encased in garments of snuff-brown dye; and if, in the peculiar twinkle of his eye, in his posture inclining

out of plumb by a direction backward-in the self-complacent air with which he shall tap his polished boots with his walkingcane-in his whole bearing, in short, shall be exhibited a most comfortable persuasion of his own importance: why then, reader, I would wager great odds that you shall have had the honor of falling in with my most respectable friend, Triptolemus Tub.

None other, reader, depend upon it, for nature never made two Triptolemus Tubs, of precisely the same length, breadth, and thickness: she never inflated another mass of corporiety with precisely the same quantum of the gas of self-esteem, nor encased she ever another conscience in so invulnerable a pericardium of obtusity. No, I am a believer in nature's omnipotence in everything but the making of two Triptolemus Tubs, and therefore, reader, shouldst thou chance to meet with the personage described, "put off the shoes from off thy feet," for he will be bound to be the veritable Triptolemus himself and none other.

Mr. Tub lives on the Virginian shore of

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