University of Virginia Library

2. RANDOM REMINISCENCES.

1. EARLY TWIG-ERY.
NO. I.

DEDICATED, WITHOUT PERMISSION, TO SYLVANUS MILLER, ESQ.

—Pope.

Norswoldwoof, the celebrated Kamschatkan scholiast, in
his “Philosophical Laconisms,” which made so much noise
at the time of their first publication, registered, at least, one
good remark, which was rendered in Blackwood's Magazine,
in strict pursuance of the original idiom—“Times is'nt as they
used to was.” Christopher North fully appreciated the originality
and beauty of the sentiment, and bestowed half a
column of commendation upon its axiomatic composition.
Feeling a deep impression upon my own heart of the mingled
truth and pathos of the thought, I was impelled with strong
desire to study what Christopher called the untranslatable
original. The only copy, however, to be found in the
country was in possession of the New York Historical
Society,—and as to getting any book off the shelves of
that institution, by a person who is not President or Secretary,
or one of the Trustees; you might as well try to get your
note discounted at a bank without being one of the directors;
or perch yourself upon a high hill, with a long rake, and
oyster for stars in the milky way. I tried to get elected a

member, and two of my sweet cousins gave me each two
shillings towards my initiation fee; but I found that there
were no meetings, and that the books were stored away for
the benefit of future ages, or else laid with well-studied carelessness
upon the book-tables of the literary—qu.? litterery
brokers—qu.? breakers—men profound in books—muslin,
and well printed—calico; and who ought, therefore, to be
able to appreciate such writers as Norswoldwoof—who had
paid their entrance money of one hundred or five hundred dollars
to buy the glory of being published in a book as gentle-men!
who had got beyond b-a—k-e-r in their spelling books, and were
patrons! of the fine arts! Heaven forgive me if I wrong
them! The heaviest affliction that I wish them is, that they
will, in some moment of unnatural wisdom, pile up their
hoarded cases in the park, and make a bonfire; and re-supply
their shelves with Parley's Magazine, Murray's Grammar,
and Bennet's Book-keeping. Two parties will be gainers by
that operation. The thirsty student, tantalized with hot thirst
for the sealed-up fountains of sparkling knowledge which he
grasps at in vain, may look on and see the ethereal essence of
soul ascend in a curling flame, like the prophet of old, to the
Heaven from which it came; and when the burning thoughts
have left the mortal scroll upon which they were impressed,
he may gather and in-urn their ashes, and stellate them
among his household-gods. The other party referred to will
derive an advantage better appreciated by them, because more
substantial. They will learn “reading, writing and arithmetic.”
Does any one doubt that these extensive acquirements
are matters of use and adornment, of which a trader in opium,
calomel, and raw-hides ought to be proud?—Look back
twenty years and tell us how many men signed their own
names. Go into the register's and surrogate's offices and
look at the deeds and wills executed by the ancestors of the
rich. Why, a Dutchman who could WRITE was looked upon
as an astrologer or necromancer; and a stray Yankee schoolmaster
snooping out a village where he might teach young
ideas how to shoot in the day-time, and the rich farmers'
buxom daughters how to spell “crucifix” at night, besides
keeping singing-school Saturday evening, and leading the
choir in “Mear,” “Wells,” and “Old Hundred,” on the next
day, was convicted by all such young gentlemen as Abraham
Bones [whose life and experience are so happily illustrated
by Diedrich Knickerbocker] as no better than a juggler or an
obtainer of other people's chattels under false pretences.
There is a manuscript history of New York which gives an
account of a justice of the peace, before whom all the causes
in Duchess county were tried, who knew no touch of quillgraphy,
but held his court in the woods, where the soil was
loamy; and, by the aid of his cane and certain sticks which
he would set up, made his notes of the testimony, and invariably
came to a correct conclusion.

But, alas! “times isn't as they used to was;” there is too
much learning abroad. People know too much. They have
studied hard names and are conceited. They carry out the
advice given by our belles-lettres professor in college, and
commit to memory the names of books they never read, and
cannot be made to understand. Everybody can read. Even
your Irish cook, unless she has just left her cabin in Limerick,
can spell out her missal. They have got beyond “ac”—“ac”
—“tion”—“shion”—“town-shun,” and are travelling into
the “ologies.” the country is in danger of being ruined by
too much “light and knowledge.” These two last mentioned
ambiguous names have been cracked up by all the tract and
moral reform societies as being highly preferable to bread

and butter; but what have they done? Have they demolished
sin? Have they multiplied virtue? Are public exhibitions
upon the stage of reality in Broadway, or of imitation at the
Olympic, less gross and pernicious than of old? Are the
morals of the city purified? Are we less or more like Sodom
and Gomorrah than we were when I was a boy? Men
that are thirty years of age, think. Think, I say, and curse
the men that taught Vice, that they might cure it, and be accounted
saints;—who first breathed into the virgin innocence
of the ears of their happily ignorant wives and girls that
there was such a thing as “guilt;”—who like the serpent
seducing Eve, gave Sin a name and called it “Knowledge,”
promising infinite happiness, while the price of the information
was everlasting Hell-fire! How smooth-tongued Belial
must gloat over the idiots!

No,—“times isn't as they used to was.” That's a beauty
of a sentence. It has a present past, and a past present mingling
in labyrinthic harmony, that fill me with rapturous pluperfection.
I mount, I fly.

I am a pretty good democrat, and love the largest liberty;
but I am inclined to think that I am a little antidemonexagotheatic.
I think Yankee schoolmasters ought to be taken up
as vagrants. Cyphering I would permit; but I would let no
one go beyond the “rule of three.” The use of hard words
shall be prohibited by statute. Dictionaries are so common
that boys buy them at book-auctions, and study the definitions
as they carry home your marketing, and the next day you
find them editors of a penny paper upon the strength of their
knowing the meaning of “liberty, equality, and tergiversation.”
The silliest attempt at an aphorism is “the Schoolmaster
abroad.” How easy to answer it. An old settler

would say, “he'd better stay at home.”—Brom watch him as
he goes by the orchard—are them onions all tuk up?”

“Renovare dolorem,” as my friend Ritchie says, in French,
“Times isn't as they used to was.” We squatted, settled,
builded meeting-houses, murdered the “Six Nations,”—multiplied
by twelve,—without knowing arithmetic, killed the Quakers,
burned the witches, drained the meadows, cut down the
trees, excommunicated the swearers, baptized the infants,
courted Saturday night, kissed our wives every day but Sab,
bath consecrating ourlips to singing what the minister read to
us upon that festival—two lines at a time,—had no hymn books
—cushions neither—drew wood for the minister, tightened the
cords of his bedstead, sent our boys and girls six miles to the
school-house with apple-pie and plain cake according, and a
rose for the school master; ploughed, trapped skunks and
buried them till they got sweet; pigeons! lord, fifty at a shot
were nothing—rabbits, don't mention how they criticised the
cabbages; partridges! we used to burn premature sulpher
under the apple trees to save the buds! Then we had no
schools for astronomy, chemistry and French. Every boy
knew the pointers and the North Star, and he felt, moreover,
when he planted his quiet little cettage, fronting the South,
with his milk and cheese dairy deep in the hill side, five
yards from the kitchen, that his own best-loved Katrina would
have things handy.—Were not these people virtuous, good,
and happy? Yet they could not write—they could not read.
Some of them, however, occasionally could spell. But of
what use was reading and writing to them. Their Domine
and the Squire could write their testaments and guide their
timorous faith. The old Doctor could sew up their scythe-cuts
and set their dislocated bones; and the news of stirring
incidents were purely, truly brought by neighbor to confiding

friend. Would a christian, or an honest man, pour “the
Herald,” or “Exhibitions of New York as it is,” into the
bosoms of those ignorant lilies of innocence? Would the God
of Heaven permit Satan to spit venom upon his own radiation
of beauty?

“Times isn't as they used to was.”—By-the-by,—I
have been beating over ground that I did not intend to travel
on—boggy—muddy,—but my dog is wild, and sometimes
makes false points and wont come in. The illustration of
Norswoldwoof's sentiment I intended to confine to scholastics,
or the accomplishment of scholars. I can not do better
than to give a touch of my own experience.

Before I begin, I want to ask a favor. I will give eighteen
pence—specie—to any individual who will deliver, for me,
to the Editor of the “Spirit of the Times,” a copy of “Webster's
Spelling-book.” Don't send me the kakosyllabic monstrosity
which he calls a dictionary; I mean the old thing
which he wrote before he forgot what he learned at school,
and invented a new alphabet. I want the old book with the
story about the green milkmaid, and of the landlord of the
apple-tree stoning a boy, and the Justice deciding that Dr.
Johnson's dictionary was an ox, and Noah's a Cape Cod bull
—cash down.

If a gentleman of leisure were to make up his mind—
that is a ridiculous expression, and I stop. Your chambermaid
may “make up” your bed, after you had been beseeching
multiplied pillows to give you one hour's quiet respite from a
headache. Penny-liars may “make up” at a moments'
warning a drowned man, a burglary, or a Corlear's-hookerism;
but mind has nothing to do with manufacture. Mind thinks,
radiates. It is impulsic. It rides with the lightning before
the wind. It flashes, and you feel the vivid flagration in your

heart before you start from the burst air upon the drum of
your trembling ear.

Of all the modern inventions that have brought sin and
death into the world, next to Madame Lecompte's legs and
Colman's engravings, the holy church doth especially anathematize
Sunday Schools. They teach snotty-nosed little
scarecrows what A is, truly; and the sweet infants reward
the pious zeal of their pedagogues in lisping complimentary
anthems, and in committing to memory the interesting detail
of the processes by which the venerable Jacob made money,
and the still more pure history of the loves of David and
Solomon. That is the doctrine of the Pope. You may call
it his “bull,” but it is not Irish only. I am Roman on this
subject, and agree with the fathers that the book ought
to be sealed, or else only wisely interpreted by a consecrated
priest. None but a Levite should approach the altar, much
less intrude into the Penetralia. Yet how is the fact in this
boasted land of equal rights and equal wisdom? Why
every bastard blasphemer who can read a sentence, lays
hold of the horns of the sanctuary, and butchers with impious
knife his bloody victim. Walter Scott was of my opinion,
when he said out of the mouth of one of his friends, “I tell
thee, Elspeth, the word killeth.” The literal unexplained
text, whose metaphors and allegories no old women in the
land can circumvent may reduce to misery the wretched soul
whom it was written to beckon to salvation. The heart of
diamond may be within its rough exterior, but give it unpolished,
untranslated by the wise, and it will be a millstone
about the neck of the outside speculator. Pope had this
rivulet of thought running through his head when he wrote,

Are we any happier for being able to read and write?
Are we stronger, healthier, handsomer, taller, honester, than
our grandsires? Can we beard wolves in their den, and ride
down perpendicularities better than old General Put? Can
we fight better than the boys did at Bunker Hill? Can we
pray more zealously and successfully than people did when
every pulpit, weekly, uplifted its voice to Heaven, and obsecrated
the sore smiting of the Hessians? Will any person
write a Declaration of Independence, and dare Tom Jefferson's
ghost to bet and “leave it to men” which is the best.
Is there any militia colonel who will accept a pair of silver
pitchers for his laborious struggles through the mud of Broadway,
and try to rival General Washington's address? Yet
these were the times when a man who could read and write
was a great scholar. The locusts of the printing press had
not yet blighted the land. The dragon's teeth of type had
not been sown. If an old newspaper got, by accident, into
a peaceful village, the fact was known forthwith, and the
Squire engaged to investigate and read it. The sheet was
looked upon suspiciously, and more thoughts dwelt upon the
devil than upon the printer. The “Arabian Nights” would
have had equal credence. That was not the way the Revolutionists
got their news. Few could read, but all could distrust
an Editor's solemn leader, because “it was in the paper.”
Who believed in Chatham? Who trusted Duane? No! when
there was a robbery, or a riot, a strike for liberty, or a row,
Fame carried the report in her mouth, holding hard on a running
horse. The lads rode and ran. Ah! well! the race
of Dutch horses in extinct. “Times isn't as they used to
was.”

This random prologue, written “ad mulcendos animos” of
of the jewelry of knowledge stampers, from the apex of the

regents of the university down to the base of the distributors
of the Common School fund, now restores my boiler to the
proper thinness of pressure. I have let off steam enough,
and go ahead.

The first school I went to was a Madam's. I forget her
name. She kept her brainpan in John street, opposite Dutch
place. All I remember of my own acquirements is—first,
the experience of a dark coal hole, under the stairway—secondly,
biting pins crooked and putting them, point up, where
the girls sat and wiggled,—not attending to their lessons,—
and thirdly and lastly, going up before the whole school and
asking the old lady, while I held tight on my posterior tegument,
“Ma'am please to let me go out?”

Next, aunt Platt tried to teach me the humanities. A
good soul was she, sixty odd, fat, pious, kind, benevolent, a
lover and excuser of child-faultery. Mother she never was,
but to the romping rascalities that other people sent her to
adopt. And she did adopt them. She looked upon a school
of thirty, and called them “MY CHILDREN.” Happy labor
was thine, dear aunt, for the very kindness of thy gentle
punishment of looking into our eyes and speaking one word
—our christian name—with those lips threatening to open,
but at the same time promising not to burst apart—that little
lock of oh! too soon! grey hair swelling out beneath the cap
that we put in a penny a-piece to buy for thee—the gentle
pressure of thy left hand, while the dexter lifted, in threat
only, the smooth-shaven ferrule. No man can doubt that
woman died happy. It is a solemn fact that her first bridal
was her burial. She was too good for men, and slept in Heaven.
She died in Dr. Spring's session room, singing,

“Hotham” was the tune.

By this time I had acquired the alphabet, and could read.
Women's schools then began to get into bad repute, unless
they had gentlemen professors. Taste grew collegiate.
Grescom lectured on chemistry, and taught children how to
make soft soap. Tammany Hall was whitewashed, and
several sachems sent their girls to French boarding institutes.
Then commenced reform. The phrase “he can't write his
name” came into acceptation. Albums and book-tables glittered
in the parlors of good society. People who couldn't
address a letter to their wives without excruciating valuable
words, affixed their certificates to reports of the West Point
examinations, vouching for the accuracy of the details, and
the supreme perfection of the students. Gammon governed
and flourished. Blessed discrimination and honesty of the
appointing power! how the retired gin-distiller, and the one
thousand per cent mixers of rhubarb and magnesia swelled
and looked wise!

In treating of Twiggery, I ought, perhaps, to order all and
classify the genera and species. I would do so, but for my
certain conviction, that no man will read this excursion who
has not, in some “pliant hour,” been “licked.” Every body
knows what a twig is. It is built of hickory—willow,
—that's poor, and breaks easy,—cowhide, dressed leather,
twisted eel-skin, or plaited horse-hair;—enough—enough—
my back bites the tender stripes of yet unfilled-up reminiscences.
After aunt Platt was taken away, I first began to
know the modifications of twiggery. When the old woman
went to Heaven, I was sent to Picket. It was considered
necessary that my growing intellect should have some of his
manure upon me, and that he should plough and harrow my
temper. He kept his menagerie—true name, for the boys
were treated like wild beasts—in Chamber-street, near Hudson.

He had a couple of sons for understrappers, but they
were “Dii minores.” The old man was Jupiter, and allowed
nobody else to thunder. Grim, coarse, whiskered,
belly-protruding, slow of foot, quick of eye, he strode between
the benches of trembling defaulters, who knew not
what to call their offence, the Arbaces of heartless pedagogues.
He never laughed but once. That was when he
called the whole school around his throne, and announced
that he had just come from the Marine Court, and had nonsuited
the father of one of the little boys down stairs, in
room No. 1, in an action brought against him for pummelling
the infant to death. [The plaintiff's pleader made a
mistake, and put in “death” in his declaration instead of
“almost to death.”] Then the master laughed; and when
he got through, he ordered three cheers for discipline, which
the boys, as they had nothing else to be cheerful about, gave
clear and strong. Then the master grinned. I see his sardonic
smile in my mind's eye now.

What I learned at this institute is more than I can tell.
My memory goes to the cutting northeasters that rushed upon
me as I turned the corner of Chamber street, and to the systematic
ingenuity of the strange inventions of Picket's cruelty
—“ecce signum!” “John Amos! come up here. I saw you,
sir. Lie down.” And the victim would lie upon the dirty
floor at extended length, like a self-immolator before the
wheels of Juggernaut. “Shorts, down.” That made two
sides of a square; to make it equilateral and complete, he
would pick out boys of similar size, so that if Amos and
Shorts were called down, every boy knew that Jim Cobble
and Earnest Fustian were to go next. When the substratum
was laid, the old man began to pile; and the human hecatombs
that we sometimes made ought to be illustrated for the

benefit of all the travellers who intended to favor the world
with further dissertations upon the pyramids of Egypt.

Another quaint branch of twiggery for which this old gentleman
was peculiar was his military distribution of discipline.
When he became tired of seeing and smelling the prostrate
group of culprits, squeezing the very wind out of each other
at his feet, he would order up a cohort of fresh boys, and tell
them to recite the lesson which they began to study five minutes
before. Of course they didn't know it. A licensed
butcher would have said in one of those moments “What a
lovely sight!” and as he looked upon a dozen hands stretched
out in a long row, after the order “right dress”—“present
arms,” ready to receive the broad slap of the heavy ball-bat,
taken from some “base” player, who ought to have known
too much to carry it to school! How the old man's countenance
would light up and burn with almost Mosaic fire as he
reviewed the line, firing his own feu de joies slap! slam!
spank!

But I cannot help thinking that the most ingenious twiggery
for which the old man is to be praised, he inflicted upon
me miserable. It was a refinement that has made him an
honorary member of the Holy Inquisition in Rome already,
and will certainly ordain him as the cunningest cardinal in
Avernus evermore. What the offence was for my life I cannot
tell—I sincerely believe there was none, and if I did admit
guilt, it was only because the tyrant frightened me. No
matter now. Only mark his twiggery. I was ordered down
stairs—the school was dismissed, not a lad remained but poor
I. “John” was despatched for “that door.” It was brought,
a veritable antique of continental times, blown off its hinges.
It was laid over the tops of the settees and desks. I was invited
to mount it, and lie upon my back in the figure of a

Saint Andrew's cross. “Lie you there, you puppy,” said the
old man. “Don't stir. John the ropes and some coarse salt.'
They left me. Two—they seemed two hundred—long hours
did I wait for my torturers. They went in to tea, and forgot
me. Night closed around the empty benches, and some floor-scourer
came with a lamp, and starting as at a thief, inquired
“what I was doing there?” I fled—fear winged my feet—
desperation gave me courage. I pleaded and remonstrated
with my father. I was picketed never more.

Next I went to Morse's, in Nassau street. My blessings
rest upon that amiable, affectionate man. He was too mild
for a schoolmaster, as that name is commonly “interpreted.”
Father—friend—brother—would be better. He accomplished
by kindness what Picket could not get out by twiggery. He
made us love him, for he was kind, he made us look up to
him, for he was good, he made us obey him, for he was just.
I never saw him in a passion. He treated children as reasonable
beings, and I think he would rather have knelt at the feet
of a wayward miscreant, and pleaded to him to be dutiful, than
box his ears, or compass his trowsers,—which process, I regret
to admit, with some misbegotten brats is sometimes indispensible.—I
learned a good deal here for a boy. The
greatest discovery I made was in animal physics. I learned
that I had a heart—I fell in love—I never told her—with
Eliza—something—not to be mentioned—who was always
head of her class, and got the highest rewards of worthy commendation.
I have seen her several times since the old school
was broken up and it always put me in mind of Adam's grammar,
and “amo, amare, amari, amatum.” Schoolboy dreams;
—spring lightning—meteors.

I don't precisely recollect what calamity dissolved my last
referred-to apprenticeship, and consigned me to other twiggery;

but I found myself one summer afternoon at Basken.
ridge, in New Jersey, boarding with old squire Lewis, in company
with six or eight exurbened candidates for literary glory,
under the care of the excellent and reverend Doctor Finlay
and his man Friday—man-every-day, I ought to say—Leek.
The Doctor was a good-natured creature, and his sternness
was affected—he was a hypocrite only in pretending to be
cross. Monday mornings he regularly marched into school
with a bunch of hickory twigs, that would have adorned the
the most provident lictor in Italia. Hum ceased as the pace
began—solemn quiet looked between stealthy eyelashes. Of
whom Mr. Leek complained nobody knew. The last night's
report was quite as uncertain as the name of the next cashier
who is to be found out. Yet somebody had to be twigged, and
that we all knew. Whether it would be owing to the spiteful
malice of Leek, or to the Doctor's firm adherence to the maxim
of “spare the whip and spoil the child,” we all knew that
“whack” had to come. The old man was moderate, though,
and soon lost his strength, and broke his whips intentionally,
and then went home and wrote his sermon for next Sunday,
leaving us in the care of Leek. That Leek!—Medusa is
painted with grinning snakes snapping at you from her forehead.
What a husband she would have had in that usher,
with his cat-o'-sixty-nine-tails swinging from his long, lean,
foul-nailed fingers! The personification of famine, consumption,
bitterness, and spite, conglomerated and condensed!
To pull a boy's ear who was startled from his book by a flock
of pigeons skirring near the window—to catch some unfortunate
in the act of laughing at an adventurous mouse intruding
into the repository of Baskenridge learning—to get a sly crack
at any boy's bottom!—that put Leek into heaven. I don't
know what salary he got, but his personal appearance was as
mean as his inside was vulgar. He perhaps had socks and a
false shirt-bosom, but he stank of that horrid disease of want
of waterism. He was a decided loafer. He mistook his
vocation, and should have established himself in the calamus
pond near the school-house, and watered with the bloodsuckers.
He might have thus avoided the prospective reputation
which Ovid wrote for him, referring to his pulling juvenile
hair, and scraping for rare love in monkeys' heads, and finding
none but of the entomological species—

I gathered here, however, more than I learned in any
eighteen months before. Principal, was wickedness, and
secondary, smooth-faced falsehood. The one followed the
other, as Lucifer's tail courses—no, streams—sticks—arrowpointed
hisses after its master's hands—“heads!”—“after”
—not so. I found that I was a simple goose when my father
left me, and drove back, leaving me his paternal blessing, with
a shilling to buy fish-hooks, and that I “didn't know nothing.”
I was no scholar, and the whole lot of boys was on me with
tricks, practices, and levies innumerable and scandalous. I
stood it until my eyes got opened, and then I fought. It was
a Philadelphia boy; let him deny it. I did do it—and the
whole school saw it—Jim Black stood by.—Poor Jim's dead.
But it was effectual—my reputation was established, and
nobody dared to follow my tracks, and let down my figure—y
—4's in the great swamp, or the parsonage woods, or touch
my reed-pole floating for catfish in Doty's pond. Leek was
the only enemy that could smite me. His inflictions I took
as a matter of duty, or perhaps habit, just as I now take sugar
to my coffee, and salt to my beefsteak. The frolics and the
mimic deviltry of that school after I got into “the cabinet,” I
have not time to record now. Wisdom crowned my forehead,

and know-a-thing-or-two-or-osity sparkled in the centre of the
diadem.

With such acquisitions, I was brought home and sent to
blind Joe Nelson to prepare for college. I looked at Joe, and
Joe felt me. He had his instrument of twiggery in his hand
at the time, consisting of a thong of leather, between which
and his hand there was an electrical sympathy; and with
that he seemed to feel the condition of my flesh, and estimate
what possible twiggery it could bear. His blue, bright, lightless
eyes knew nothing; but his whip saw. Certain it is, its
accurate stripes made delinquents wish they had a lightning-rod
to carry the fiery streak down from their non-conducting
shoulders, and precipitate into the earth their hot sufferance
of random vengeance. John Walsh, the junior partner, or
head clerk, looked on with both his foreheads, and all his
chins, and grinned his satisfaction. Then we all studied out
aloud. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” snakes, witchcraft,
Greek, and algebra were all studied at together. The
essence of the sound, if condensed by a curious chemist,
would have been a mixture to be named. We were examined
and admitted as freshmen in Columbia. I laid my cheek upon
the bosom of Alma.

I must rest now, I am upon holy ground. Discuss we this
new culture of twiggery with solemn awfulness. I am exalted
to the upper air. Base cuffs, vanish!

2. EARLY TWIG-ERY.
NO. II.

REMINISCENCES OF OUR CLASS IN
COLLEGE.

That is a torn chaplet from the festive wreath, which thou,
dear Doctor Bill T—, didst fling upon the altar of our affections,
on that roysterous night, when we solemnized a
wake over the corpse of the class of eighteen hundred and—
blank. The smoke of the incense of the altar went up gloriously.

It was a melancholy, frolicksome, mad symposium. Commencement
was ended. The speeches had been spoken.
The berries and the leaves of the bacca-laureation had been
plucked. Each ingenuous youth had got his due share of
“tu vero videas, probe te geras,”[1] to start him ahead upon his
journey through this world of trouble. The attentive audience
had been dismissed with thanks for their civil behavior,

and a benediction in Latin. We were let loose to seek
our fortunes. The blessing of our Alma Mater was fresh
upon our heads, the memory of the happy days we had labored
in her household was green and bitter in our hearts.
We had her best recommendation for sobriety, honesty, and
extensive capacity, in our pockets. “Optimæ spei juvenis,”[2]
was wreathed around our brows. We were proud, and humbled,
happy and wretched. The new sense of boyhood gone,
and manhood begun, of not understood independence, crazed
us. We walked on stilts.—We felt the earth pressing down
upon us as on a clod.—We were newly married.—We had
lost our mother.—The tie was severed.—We were turned
out of house and home.—We should never be called before
the board again.—We had been torn from the breasts of our
beautiful nurse, and from the blessed fountains whence we
had been accustomed to suck our daily milk of Greek particles,
and conic sections, and were thrown into the streets to make
room for a new set of brats whom the professors had been
lately getting! We were collegians no more! Good bye,
black silk gown. Good bye, old trees. Good bye, bell.
Good bye, janitor. But not yet had we said, Good bye, fellows.
A very afflicting valediction had been pronounced for
us, in the church, it is true, and much tears were talked of,
by a speaker appointed by the board. But that appointment
was not ours, and the pathos reached the hearts of other
classes than the senior. Our valedictory orators pronounced,
and sung, their valete, at Kensington House, where our parting
supper was spread. We were all orators, and poets too,
that night. But chiefly thee, Dear Doc, did Anacreon fill
full of inspiration. Why wert thou at the foot of thy class,
O thou Son of Song!

The declared estimate of merit of boy students does not
always stellate either the honesty, or discrimination of the
judges. I do not say this out of bad spite because I carried
away none of the honors. My vexation is that such excellent
merit as the Doctor's should have borne off what is next
to disgrace. But no matter, dear Bill; thou wert up head in
our love; and it is better to have warm, full hearts, without
honors, than a cold, empty honor without a share in your
classmates affections. Remember, too, that gigantic Dr.
Mitchell was accounted worthy to be graduated in an equal
rank. And thou wert comforted with the companionship of
Junius T—, and Jack T—, forming with thee, a goodly
musical T. party; all since, solemn medical doctors. Jun.
and Jack, alas! breathe no more the atmosphere of this earth.
They are with the school-fellows of Justice Silence. Years
since, ye died, boys, in your yet unexhausted adolescence.
Pax vobiscum! How many of us are left? Let us call the
roll, and see.

Shall we call the roll of the dead, and demand our friends
from the grave? Aye! let us bring back the old college
chapel, and the familiar lecture-rooms, and the healthy youth
that defied mortality with its well-knit muscles, and the sport
and the loves of boy enthusiasm. Classmates, come! Attention
to the calling of the roll! ADSUM is the word.

Harry P.!—Harry P.!—Thou wert at the head of thy
class worthily. But thou answerest not now to thy name
called. Thy place is empty, and we must mark thee “absent.”
O sorrow! not for thee, but for us who mourn so much genius
and virtue lost to us!

Noble, magnanimous, proud Harry! A boy patriot, stately,
exclusive, jealous of his right of citizenship, heir of a rich
estate, distrustful of the common herd, hater of Irishmen!

He worshipped Hamilton. But the grave holds him now,
whom the Senate-house expected;—his body only, not his
fame. Death, not Oblivion, has triumphed. Before the Destroyer
came he honored his country, and kissed the soil of
Greece dear to him for his love of her heroes and philosophers.
He comforted blood-stained Marathon, and, danger-daring,
dealt out the charities of his country to the suffering
islands of the ægean. The Turk cursed him, and the bread
which he brought to the lips of the daughters of Pindar and
Demosthenes.

Harry wrote his travels and experience. But he was
modest, and he did not write for lucre, eking out his landlord's
rent by “inklings” spattered from a bitten pen. No printer's
devils, bought with unknown clean shirt-collars, extolled the
praise of his unaffected story. His book knew no puffs, and
has been only a thing to steal from. But he is honored where
his spirit would have sought honor, and it matters not that the
million of ladies'—weekly—miscellanies never had communion
with his spirit.

Bill J.—No. 2, answers “here,” and we give hearty thanks
for the hope that some good fellows are left to us. Three
years and a half did studious, always prepared Billy, wear the
crowning laurels of laborious desert; but he laughed, one day,
out of season, during the senior year, and “alter,”—Harry,—
“tulit honores.” He was saved the necessity of writing a
salutatory in Latin—he abjured the past, and the present, and
consoled himself with a poem on “the pleasures of anticipation.”
It is a thing to be recorded and rejoiced at, that his
anticipations were bright, and better yet, that they have not
been fashions of deceitful fancy. The purest ermine on his
neck, gives ample vouchers for his acknowledged excellence.

Bill is the same Bill yet;—simple, but wise;—unpretending,

but learned;—single-hearted,—guile never knew him, nor
uneasy envy. To do what would make him happy,—that
was his only exertion; and he never was happy, but in doing
good, or in helping along some piece of doubtful evil which
was needful for the comfort of his friends. You cannot provoke
him, nor make him jealous. He looked sorrowful for
only two minutes, when he heard the annunciation of his lost
first honor. It would not grieve him now, to be defeated by
one vote, in a contest for a seat in Congress. Put Woodfall
and the Revised Statutes under his arm, and he is the same
boy that he was when he went down Park Place, hugging
Euclid, Vince, and Greca Majora.

Next—next—next;——I never did exactly comprehend
the adjustment of the honors of scholarship in our class;—but
next, I believe, comes the Vale—dictator—I stand by that
word. It means a dictator appointed by the board of professors,
to take care that the boys bid each other good-bye before
the ladies and gentlemen, according to the forms of the bye-laws
of the college, for that purpose duly established and enacted.

I have forgiven thee, O careful minder of rules and regulations,
obedient, good boy; and I love thee, now, moderately.
Yet it was a pity, that, of all the class, thou only wert present
on that morning when I was doomed to read, in the chapel,
after prayers, before the assembled college, with crocodile
penitence, a sorrowful admission of the enormity of my adjudged
iniquity, and to exalt the merciful mildness of the retribution!
Thy presence spoiled the oneness of the effect.
The freshmen, too, might have mistaken thee for the culprit,
or coupled thee with me, miserable as a joint transgressor.
But the offence was not very rank, and they could not have
held thee disgraced. I protest that that punishment was cruel

and unusual. So thought my classmates; and I being ignorant,
and utterly innocent of conspiracy, they resolved to be
absent on the morning of the execution.[3]

God bless their noble souls! Only thou wert there, sitting
with meekness and sweet humility, and pitying, doubtless,
those bad young men who imposed it upon thee to represent the
virtue of the class, and to reap the meed of the contrast of thy
good behavior;—like Hogarth's good apprentice, who married
his master's daughter, and got the estates and honors of
the family.

Verily, good boys shall have their reward. Prosperity
shall still follow thee, O my friend!—assiduous, watchful, vain,
subtle, obsequious to the People,—the People shall yet own
thee for a mighty man to get office from them.

Let us go on with the roll. P. M. is called and comes;
and we clasp to our bosom the spirit of poetry and the soul of
friendship. He was the favorite of the class, the prized and
admired. What sensibility of criticism, or what instability of
purpose, dearest P., deprives the class of the honor of thy
name, long since by heaven decreed to be celebrated for
mighty genius.

By his side, coming with modest steps, approaches amiable
Stephen H. His thin form, pale cheek, light blue eye,—his
pleasantly smiling, half opened lips, disclosing small brilliantly
white teeth, are familiar and welcome as heretofore. Only
he is older, and there is a cast of care upon his brow, deeper,

and half melancholy. Happy is that village church which
owns him for her pastor.

Next, jolly I. F. dashes to his place, and we greet his rosy
face with the well-remembered joy of old times. He first
gave his heart to the study of the decisions of Courts that have
powers to overrule the established fashions of other brother
and sister tribunals, and which are commonly called “Law;”
but soon, and wisely, determined that the whole race of Bracton
and Britton were unprofitable company; and now he
draws a revenue from rum, sugar and molasses. Mark him
“present” with a whole heart.

Bill B. cannot speak. Consumption wasted away him,
beloved both by the professors and his fellow-pupils. Weep
not. It is the common lot. We have all got to go soon.
Call on.

J. S. gives an uncertain sound. His voice is as the voice
of a ghost, or else as of a schoolmaster buried alive in the far
west. I know not how to mark him.

Good-hearted S. O., too. He left his country, and pursued
the lucre of merchandize in a foreign land. Does the sunny
sky, or the cold earth of the churchyard canopy his head.
He is absent without excuse.

H. J., solemn and dignified for a little fellow, wears a bishop's
cassock, and seems to censure the freedom with which
we summon old associates; but he takes his seat and submits
to our invocation.

G. W. flourishes with the scalpel and lancet. Impatient
haste draws him to his patients. We must let him depart.
He is one of the friends to whom we might give authority in
an extreme case to cut us, but then, only professionally.

G. H. ministers to the reformed Dutch in a pleasant town
in Jersey. When I saw him last, some years ago, he

had given proof of his power of persuasion, by inducing a
prime lamb of his flock to become his spouse; and she had
given fruitful evidence of her attachment to the shepherd, in
the shape of half-a-dozen little lambkin boys and girls.

F. P. comes next, true gentleman, from his magnificent
manor, nor avoids a seat with his classmates, who always received
him open-armed. Goddess Fortune, when she smiled
upon him, took off her bandage and exercised good judgment.

G. G. rather majestic at some times, but always good-natured.
G. cries out a hearty “here.” He worshipped the
legal muses, and still officiates in their priesthood, speaking
oracles to clients, who, with just confidence, pay well for favorable
responses.

W. C. leaps into his place with a long bound;—he whom
we used to call “Amaryllis,”—with his soft, feminine cheek,
clear gentle eye, and beginning-to-grow downy chin. He was
famous for a quick moving foot, and was always chosen first
at foot-ball. I have to show a scar upon my knee, gained
from him upon the Battery, in the raging melee. The class
got through trigonometry while I was laid up, and that consoled
me. He plays now the serious games of “for that whereas,”
and “may it please your Honor.” The boy ball-player has
disappeared in the Counsellor of men.

The list is nearly through; Death has made sad havoc
below the middle of the class. There are left, besides, to
answer only W. M. and W. G., bred to the legal bar, but happily
independent upon that laborious profession;—and then,
dear Doctor Bill, and E. P., of unquestionable talent and laziness,
Nimrod of the class,—mighty feather scatterer. We
awarded to him the first honor in that department of science,
which comprises the theory of percutient bodies, and the composition
and resolution of forces and projectiles. That kind

of philosophy was truly natural to him—he was born to illustrate
it. I never knew a practical lecturer who, “the initial
velocity being given,” could better “find the direction in which
a body must be projected in order to hit a given point.” He
is high yet on some kind of “points,” and almost inimitable as
to “direction.”

Let us not forget C. E., honored with a diploma, causa favoris,
and the payment of the necessary fees;—nor simple
G. S., “commee,” as his name went. He was the jovial Andronicus
of the class, yet was sometimes pathetic, and read
compositions about “the streaming rivulet of consistency
which flows but to cement,” and other poetical melancholies
of the same tender spirit. Commee paid the fees, however,
and got his diploma. Money is a great blessing. Where the
boy is now the Lord knows. Mark him absent.

What horrid appetite of the grave has swallowed up the
rest of the three last grades! Little, hump-backed P. S., and
red-haired Tom K., and strong-passioned E. S., and thin J. L.,
torn from the church, and fat “Duck” W., and pale, innocent
shadow W. F., who answered to the sobriquet of “Sol Lob,”
and musical Jack T., with his ever-present companion Jun?
—Alas! boys—

—Shelley.

Stay! stay! stay! stay! I recall my invocation! Speak
not, I conjure you! Speak not! My heart is gone! I cannot
bear the solemn vision!

What fearful changes are produced by the revolution of a
few short years! We entered, a class of forty-seven. We

were graduated, a class of twenty-nine; of this number only
nineteen are surviving, counting some bachelors as existing
of whom I have no certain knowledge! It seems but as yesterday
that we were boys; and now we are mature men, clergymen,
physicians, lawyers, merchants, judges, legislators,
fathers in the Republic! It never occurred to me before that
I am getting old. It is time for me to repent and reform. Dr.
Wilson used to say that our class was the worst class that he
ever had to do with, and he was pleased to assure me upon one
occasion that I was the worst young “mon” in it. I wonder
whether I have improved any. But he did me injustice there,
I never threw a torpedo on the floor between the Doctor's
legs, merely to see him jump, nor did I ever let loose in the
lecture-room a mouse, or any other quadruped, as did some
sad boys with longer faces, and in better credit than myself.
I seriously affirm that my only guilt has been that of an accessory
after the fact, in laughing at the silly joke. Yet I had
not occasionally to suffer for imputed transgressions, as thou,
dear Doc., canst testify. But I never quarrelled with thee,
Doc., about that matter—and it is all over now. Let the
thing go.

Here I am! here I am! And what am I, that I am left to
write these reminiscences? Where is my recorded merit,
my service done to the church, or to my country, of which
this prolonged duration of life is the reward? Let me retire,
and give myself an examination. I am, I think, awakened.

A FEW INTERESTING INCIDENTS IN THE TERRESTRIAL
EXISTENCE OF A YOUNG MAN
WHO USED TO LIKE HORSES.

I love a good, fast horse. I luxuriate in a well balanced
buggy. If my biography be ever written, “gaudet equis” will
be the weathercock quotation set above the history to show
which way the wind of its lucubration is about to blow. My
equine propensities were developed as soon as I could toddle
upon truant feet to the nearest stable in the neighborhood. At
the sixth year's existence, I abstracted a shilling from my stepmother's
work box, to pay the man that kept the zebra; but I
honestly paid it back, with funds acquired the next day by
running away from school and holding the horses of two militia
colonels, when they dismounted on the parade ground,
for a grand review by the brigadier general.

Our milk-man had a horse; he was not a very especial
beauty; but couldn't he go fast around the corner! I once
knocked down a little peanut girl, and turned Maiden-lane into
a very palpably milky way, by trying to find the maximum of
proximity which might be attained between a pump and the
hub of a wheel, without any necessary collision of contiguous
particles of matter. Like many other philosophers, I came
near sacrificing my life to my scientific zeal, just at the moment
when I deemed my discovery secure, and my triumph
certain and glorious. The jealous fates, as usual, interfered,
and with violent rage at my promised success, precipitated
me across the street into the centre of the peanut establishment
just referred to. Down went the lady-merchant, and
down went her apples, peanuts and barbers'-poles. I felt sorry
for the poor thing, but it was all her fault, for not getting out

of the way; or else it was the fault of the corporation in planting
such a stubborn hydrodynamical obstacle at the corner of
the street.

This was but the preface to more glorious exploits, the entitulement
of a long chapter of spirit-stirring accidents. The
incidents of my life have been but a catalogue of the names
of danger. I have been run away with by frightened, and
kicked and bitten by vicious steeds; I have been thrown from
stumblers; I have broken down in sulkies; I have been upset
in gigs—in fine,—for the whole catalogue would be
tedious,—I have been crushed, and banged and bruised, and
battered in all manner of imaginable fashions; so that it is a
crying mercy that I have fingers left to write this penitential
confession. Indeed, when I reflect upon my various hair-breath
salvations, I cannot help thinking of what an eminently
amiable Dutch gentlewoman told certain foraging pupils of a
country boarding-school, concerning some choice forbidden
fruit, touching which we had mounted a tree in her garden.
“Don't hook them are cherries, boys,” she screamed, “I'me resarved
them for presarves.” O! what a jubilate would go up
from my blessed maiden aunts, were the promise of a hope to
be shadowed forth, that I am reserved for some better function
than to moisten the shears of Mistress Beldame Atropos!

When I had escaped so far as my sixteenth year, I was
driving a spirited, half-broken colt before a pleasure wagon,
near a country village, in the neighborhood of which myself
and my companion expected to shoot on the succeeding day.
It was just at night, and our journey was nearly completed.
All of a sudden, our whiffle-tree became detached from the
vehicle, and fell upon the horse's heels. Off then he started,
in the madness of his fright, utterly uncontrollable, and whirling
us after him in the bounding wagon. The trees and fences

appeared and vanished like lightning; we seemed to fly. All
that I could pray for, was to be able to keep our racer in the
road, and I hoped to hold him on a straight and steady run,
until the furious animal should be exhausted. Vain hope!
my hands were soon powerless from the strain of holding and
sawing and pulling on the reins. Just at this crisis, a little
green lane, running at right angles with the turnpike, invited
the wilful feet of our crazy colt, by a fair promise of an easy
road, and a speedy barn-yard termination. But, alas! not
three bounds had the runaway made upon his new chosen
course, before he brought us upon a spot where they were
mending the track, and where the way was accordingly strewn
with huge, rough stones. That was the last I saw, and it is
all I remember of the matter.

Two days afterwards, I awoke, and found myself in bed, in
a strange place. I raised my hand to rub my eyes open, and
dispel the supposed dream, but to my astonishment, I found
that my arm was stiff and bandaged, as though I had been
lately bled. I was weak and sore in all my bones. There
was a smell of camphor in the room. A bottle marked “soap
liniment,” stood upon a table by my bed-side. The window-shutters
were half closed, but a curiously cut crescent,—the
crowning glory, no doubt, of the artificer of the domicil,—admitted
the bright rays of a mid-day sun. All was still as the
solitude of a wilderness.

I fell back upon the pillow in amazement. It was a neat,
pleasant, little room, plainly, but comfortably furnished,
adorned with peacocks' feathers, tastefully arranged around
the walls, and a large boquet of fresh flowers in the fire-place.
The appointments of the bed were delightful; the sheets were
white as snow, and the curtains were of old-fashioned chintz,
blue and white, presenting to my wondering eyes innumerable

little venuses and cupids. Why should I be a-bed there, and
the sun shining in the window, bright as noonday?

A newspaper lay upon the foot of my bed; I took it up, and
gazed upon it vacantly. It was the village hebdomodal, just
moist from the press. A mist floated before my eyes as they
fell upon my own name. When I regained my uncertain vision,
I made out with difficulty to comprehend the following
editorial announcement: “We regret to mention, that on
Thursday evening last, a serious accident befell Mr. Renovare
Dolorem, jun. and Dr. Cerberus Angelo, of New-York, as they
were riding in a wagon, in the vicinity of this village. The
horse taking fright, ran away, upset the vehicle, and threw out
the gentlemen near the toll-gate. Mr. D. was taken up for
dead, but the doctor escaped unhurt. Fortunately, Squire
Hoel Bones was passing by at the time, and he and the doctor
conveyed Mr. D. to a house in the neighborhood, where,
we are happy to say, every attention is rendered to the unfortunate
sufferer. Mr. D. continues still insensible.”

Here then was a development of the why and wherefore of
my stiff joints and meridian repose. “So, then, now for another
week's repentance,” I sighed aloud; but there was some
one at the door, and I stopped and shut my eyes. I heard
the rustling of frocks, and soft footsteps fell upon the floor,
and presently the curtains were drawn aside, and I perceived
the shadows of two light figures bending over me, and I heard
low, restrained breathings. A small forefinger wandered
about my wrist, in search of my pulse; a little hand was
drawn several times across my forehead, and then it put back
the tangled hair that overhung my eyebrows: I thought it
seemed to linger about my temples, as though its owner wished
there was another matted tuft yet to be adjusted.

“He has got more color than he had, sister;” was the first
spoken sentence. No reply was made.

“Poor fellow! I wonder if he will die. Is n't he handsome,
Mary?” said the same fair speaker, after a little pause.

I am telling a true story, and if I have to rehearse compliments
that were paid me when a boy, it must not be set down
under the head of vanity.

Mary answered not, but she sighed. That was voice and
speech enough for me. She was evidently the younger of
the two, and my boyish fancy quickly formed the beau ideal
of the girl who heaved that sigh for my misadventures and
dangers. I was at once in love, deeply, devotedly. I cared
not to open my eyes; I would willingly have been blind for
ever, the vision of my imagination was so happy. Yet it was
painful to lie there, a hypocrite, affecting insensibility, and
hear my physiognomy and my chance of recovery discussed
between the maidens. Perhaps I was bashful—O quantum
mutatus! and had not the courage to encounter the eyes of
beings whom I knew not, but in the kind discharge of the
grateful offices of guardian angels. I wonder they did not
feel my quick beating pulse, and hear my throbbing heart
beating against my ribs!

Presently they left my bed-side and glided to the looking-glass,
where they conversed in inaudible wispers. I ventured
to peep through a crevice in the curtain, and reconnoitre
my gentle nurses. Need I say they were both beautiful?

Presumptuous wretch! O! worse than profaner of the
mysteries of the Bona Dea, to gaze with unlicensed eye upon
the delicate services of the toilet! The cruelly punished Actæon
was to be pitied, for he rushed unwittingly into the presence
of the hunter goddess; but I courted my just punishment,

and if I was doomed to love both sisters madly, it was
but a merciful judgment!

The elder sister was, I thought, about twenty; Mary had
scarcely passed her fifteenth year. Had it not been for that
newspaper, I might have revelled in the fancies of a Turkish
paradise.

Jenneatte took out her comb, and there gushed down her
back a full bright flow of auburn tresses, that almost reached
her feet.

Sister Mary assisted her in plating and adjusting and putting
them up, and then tightened her corset-lacing, and then
—, spare me, spare me, too faithful memory! and then
sister Jenneatte left Mary and me alone.

If the doctor had come in at the moment, he could have
told whether I had a fever, without taking out his watch, and
looking wise.

I closed my eyes, for Mary was at my bedside, and her
evident agitation assured me that there was pity in her heart.
Kind, good girl! that innocent sympathy would have won the
mercy of the coldest censor. She put her arm under the
pillow, and gently raised my head. Something rested on my
cheek; it was warm and moist; there was a gentle pressure
about it; it was still and quiet; and Mary's breath was with
it; and it came again, and again—yes, Mary kissed me—
gods!

Fudge. I am getting rhapsodical. What can have made
my eyes so misty? Mary is nothing to me—now that—,
pshaw!

When Doctor Cerberus Angelo came in to see me, I was
alone, tossing to and fro with a burning fever. Consternation
and hurry were written on his face, for he came upon a

summons from Mary, who had told him, in tears, that I had
waked up, and was very wild and flighty.

The lancet renewed its office, and sudorifices and antifebriles
were again my bitter portion. But all the doctor's
practice reached not my disease. That night, that night!
how I suffered! I raved and ranted all manner of incoherent
nonsense; now calling upon Mary, and now crying for Jenneatte.
The doctor soothed, and scolded, and brought me mint
tea, and swore at me. At last, I fell asleep, and there was a
quiet house until the next morning, when I awoke faint, weak,
and melancholy.

I tried to reason with myself upon the absurdity of my passion
for the two girls, but without avail. It was a species of
insanity which I could not cure. I slowly recovered my
strength and health, but before a fortnight had elapsed, I had
offered my boy-heart to each of the sisters, and was engaged
to be married to them both.

This was not villainy, but madness. The doctor found it
out, and read me a lecture on gratitude. I think he was jealous
of me. He wrote also to my father, and a close carriage
soon conveyed me from the place where my heart was doubly
pledged. Jenneatte kissed me good-by at the door. She
could do it with propriety—she was so much older than me;
but Mary ran up into her room, to cry, by herself.

When I arrived at man's estate, did I not of course continue
to love Mary, and make the tender-hearted little country
girl my wedded wife?—

I am wandering again. Let me proceed to another incident.
We were talking of horses and accidents.

I am romantic enough to love to ride upon a moonlit night.

What a beautiful sight is the full, round-faced goddess, mounting
into a clear, blue sky, just after the snow has done falling,
and the wind is lulled into an almost infant's breath! How
it makes one think of sleigh-bells, and fur cloaks, and buffalo
skins, and mulled wine, and bright eyes, and cold elastic
cheeks, and warm merry hearts! “On such a night as this,”
my college chum Harry and I drove a gallant pair of coursers
up to old Dorus Van Stickler's mansion, in New-Jersey. The
girls had promised to go, and the sleighing was capital, and
there was to be a ball at Valley-grotto, about nine miles off.
We left the horses in charge of sable Sam, and bounded into
the house. Harry's sweetheart was all ready, but Jemima
my Jemima had a bad headache, and could not go. This grief
was distressing enough, in all conscience; but what think you
of her aunt Starchy's stalking into the room, rigged out with
muff and tippet—as I am a sinner!—and telling me that it
was a pity that I should be disappointed, and that she would
go with me herself, in Mima's place?

Fire and ice! what benevolence! and O! provident antiquity!
she put into my hands as a pledge of her sincerity, her
snuff-box, and a towel-full of gingerbread, to sneeze and eat
upon the road.

I was patient; very patient. Yet, nevertheless, I did think
of going out and breaking one of the horses' legs. “But after
all,” whispered my good genius to me, and then I to Harry,
“what need we care! To be sure, we can't go to the
ball, and we'll have to come home early; but trust to fate.
I'll try to get rid of her. Remember, I shall drive.”

I assisted the old lady into the sleigh. It was like lifting
an icicle or a chesnut rail.

We rode more than a mile before a word was spoken, except
to the horses. I had the reins. Harry and his loved

one were on the back seat, talking by looks and actions.
Happy, happy Harry!

The old woman, after a while, grew drowsy—she did, by
Jove. She pitched backwards and forwards, now knocking
Harry, and now saluting me with her honored cranium. She
seemed used to it, for despite of all my hopes, she would not
tumble out of the sleigh.

At last we approached a tavern, near which was a beautiful,
deep snow-drift. I knew the ground. It was rough, and
a little precipitous on the roadside, and unless I drove with
uncommon carefulness, we should certainly be upset. I
looked at Harry. There was a contagious wickedness in his
eye that made my hand unsteady. I must have pulled on the
near-side rein a little too hard, for the runner went down into
a deep rut, our centre of gravity was lost, and we were unceremoniously
tumbled helter-skelter into the snow-bank.

Aunt Starchy screeched out, as though every bone in her
body was broken. Harry lifted her up, and brushed the snow
off her, while I got the horses into the road. She insisted
upon going to the tavern, to ascertain whether she had not
received some inward bruise, declaring, in spite of all our entreaties,
that she would ride no further, and that we must go
on without her.

Accordingly, we hoisted her in, and drove up to Boniface's.
The first thing that I did there, was to get her a stiff glass of
gin and water, which the old lady drank off with great comfort
to her weak stomach, declaring that she always admired
how considerate I was. This prescription being so well received,
I was satisfied that a hot rum-toddy might be swallowed
with additional benefit; and I am proud to declare that
my course of practice upon this occasion made the most rapid

and successful progress. The good old gentlewoman soon
ceased to grunt, and she presently fell into a pleasant sleep.

It would have been cruel to awake her and renew our entreaties
to accompany us; so we tucked her up, and told Mrs.
Boniface we would call for her when we came back, and off
we started for the ball. O! had Jemima but been with us,
then! However, little Sue de Mott and Jane Antonides both
lived on our road.

Every body has been on a sleighing frolic once, and it
would be foreign to our business, to tell what else took place.
Harry stopped for the old lady on his return about three
o'clock next morning. Something detained me in the neighborhood
of the ball-room until daylight.

Riding of a dark stormy night cannot be esteemed a pleasure.
Yet a frequent roadster must sometimes be prepared to say composedly
to the clouds, “pour on, I will endure.” My last experience
of a wet ride was shared by Doctor Gulielm Belgium.
Fate has been ironical with me, in more than once giving me
a doctor for a companion in my travelling distresses. I told
this story once to Angelo, in a letter which I have begged
back to help my memory. I cannot do better than to quote my
recital on the impulse of the adventure. Here it is.

“—So he invited me to take some vehicular enjoyment on
the road to Cato's.

“Allons! and we started.

“He was made up with more than even his own exquisiteness,
this afternoon. His mere vestimental arrangements
were enough to show that in his time he had read a book, and
travelled out of his county. There was nothing flash or
Corinthian in the structure; the order of the architecture was

rather of the simplest Doric. But what a beautiful fitness!
what a harmony of composition! He had crowned his caput
with a bran new golgotha, beneath whose gracefully curved
brim, his late shorn locks showed here and there their glossy
edges, just sufficiently to satisfy the careless gazer of the ample
stock from which they descended, and without encroaching too
much upon the boasted beauty of his well-framed forehead.
His whiskers—they were so accurately and curiously cut, you
would have been reminded of the days when people trimmed
trees and hedges into the likeness of birds and beasts; they
were so thick, and smooth, and regular, that a stray mosquito
planting his tired feet upon their tangling meshes, might have
thought himself upon the surface of a swath of his own native
meadows, just after it had been swept by the scythe of the
merry mower. His cheek had a ruddy, hearty glow of health
upon it. His eye was bright and keen. You would have
thought it had not twinkled over hochheimer for a month.
But the coup de grace of all was a kidded forefinger, against
which gently pressing digital there seemed to languish a slender
walking-stick, of the most singular and severe virtue. No
vulgar man ever sported such a staff. There was but one
other like it in the world. It was the rarest quality of sandalwood,
precious as the golden rod, that led the pious æneas
to the elysian fields. It cost judgment, taste and a price. It
was of eastern origin, and drew its earliest breath in India.
You might have suspected that, from the voluptuous perfume
that was breathed from the wood, and from its delicate form
and tint, and from the fineness of its texture and fibre. The
color was slightly changeable, and nearest of any thing else
to the invisible orange of the neck plumage of a Barbary
pheasant.

“None but a brave man, and a good-looking, well-dressed
fellow would have dared to wear it.

“We reached our original destination in safety, and then,
tempted by the mildness of the evening, extended our jaunt
in the pleasant twilight to Harlaem, and returned at our easy
leisure to the Roman's. Here a sudden and violent midnight-black
mass of rain and thunder and lightning blocked up the
road, so that we were fain compelled to stop and comfort ourselves
with tongue and a salad. When the storm abated, we
renewed our travel homeward, Belgium commanding the reins.
Soon, however, again the darkness became so thick, that it
rested upon our eyelids like a palpable weight; we could not
see our way except when the heavenly fulgurations set it all
on fire. Still on we went. There is a place about two hundred
yards from the censor's, on the return to the city, where
the alderman of the twelfth ward has provided a deep ditch
on the roadside, for the devil to set man-traps. I had a feint
recollection of the existence of these pitfalls, and I entreated
my learned friend to let me have the reins.

“B. was a good fair-weather driver, and one of the few whom
I could trust by daylight; but he had not the owl eyes of an
old traveller by night. His pride, however, stood up at the
insinuation that I could see better in the dark than he, and he
peremptorily refused.

“Of all the agonies of apprehension, save me from the incubus
of an unskilful, head-strong driver! I begged and beseeched
him to yield, for I saw that he was leaving the road;
but no, he insisted that he was right, and that he could not be
mistaken.

“`Drive to the right, for mercy's sake,' I cried, feeling the
left wheel of the vehicle already on the descent into the ditch.

“`Drive to Tartarus and be quiet,' or something like it, was
the kind and amiable response.

“I grew angry now, and tried the influence of abuse; but
nothing could move the obstinate madness of my Dutchman.
`I see the road plainly enough, don't be a fool,' and other
such gentle phrases were all the reward that I got for my poor
pains. On urged the headlong Jehu, and not long deferred
was our embrace of `mater et terra genitrix.' Down went
our five hundred dollar mare, some eight or ten feet into the
bottom of the ditch, and in a little brief moment were figured
out a group of horse, and men, and buggy, precipitated, conglomerated
and accumulated, at sight of which Hogarth would
have wept for joy.

“The violence of the fall stunned me for a minute. When
I came to myself, I was uncertain whether terrene habitations
yet possessed me, or whether I was a groping ghost upon the
banks of the dark Styx. I listened for the noise of Ixion's
wheel, and the rumbling of the stone of Sisyphus, but I heard
instead the doctor cry out, `d— it,' as he turned over upon
his side, in a mud-puddle by the head of our poor beast. Assured
by this unequivocal evidence of vitality, I got upon my
feet, and without waiting to make any inquiries about bones,
I plunged through the rain to the house of our late host for
relief. I soon returned to the scene of distress with a lantern,
and a sleepy negro. Then, dear Angelo, there was a sight
to look at. O! could you have seen B. come up to me, at
that moment, with his pet cane, his unique, broken in his
hands, with that wo-begone expression on his countenance—
with that tragical attitude, hatless—his heavy eye-brow dripping
with rain—his hair seeming to be in a state of liquidation,
and fast flowing down upon the muddy adornments of coat
and white—ah! once white pantaloons; his left hand pointing

to the fragment in his right, as though that were the only
thing to be lamented or cared for; while the mare lay groaning
in the ditch, and the lightning flashed, and the wind and rain
beat and whistled around us, and the negro yawned, and the
light of the lantern threw a narrow streak now upon one, and
then upon another feature of the scene; now disclosing a hat
—or rather what had once been a hat—and now an umbrella,
and now a buggy-cushion. If your neck had been broken,
you would have laughed at this ludicrous piece of picturesque.
How can I give you an idea of the appearance of the hero of
the scene? Think of old Lear, bare-headed in the tempest;—
no, that's not it. Think of Othello, in his bitterest anguish,
harrowing up his soul with the thoughts of what had been.
Do you remember Kean's air, and attitude, when he comes to
this melancholy passage—

“I have given you brush, easel and canvas; you have a good
fancy—draw the waterscape yourself.

“But be amazed at our escape. A broken dashboard, a
strained shoulder, and the doctor's ruined habiliments, made
the sum total of our added up distresses. I must confess for
myself some undefinable rheumatics; but I am willing to bear
that infliction, by way of warning against rides by night, and
opinionated drivers.”