THE LIVING-DEAD.

97

the grave of one whom he professed so ardently to admire, was a notion which could only have entered a brain like his own.

Ir was a sad thing just now, in the gay and busy Broadway, under a sunny, cloudless sky, with the healthful current of life coursing joyously in our own veins, to relinquish the feverish and wasted hand of a friend at whose door DEATH will call ere long, and walk with him through the Dark Valley. I am going,' said he, in a voice scarcely above a whisper; 'I am fast going; I shall leave all this!' and he turned his glassy eyes upward to the calm clear heavens, and waved his hand toward the busy crowds that rolled through the street or pattered with hasty steps upon the pave; 'I shall soon leave all this!' 'It is but too true!' thought we, as we turned to watch his slowly-receding footsteps:

-'YET a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image.'

May he be able to say with joy, when the Last Messenger shall await his departure, 'Come DEATH to this frail, failing, dying body! come the immortal life!'

98

PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.

STANDING with a friend the other day by the river-side, to take in the noble coup d'œil of the new steamer KNICKERBOCKER, we overheard a little anecdote connected with water-craft, which made our companion merry all the way home; which we shall here transcribe; and which it is hoped may please.' 'It seems there was' (nay, we know not seems, there was) a verdant youth from the interior of Connecticut, for the first time on board a steamboat. His curiosity was unbounded. He examined here, and he scrutinized there; he wormed from the engineer a compulsory lecture on the steam engine and mechanics in general, and from the fireman an essay on the power of white heat, and the average consumption of pine cord-'ood." At length his inquiring mind was checked in its investigations, and 'the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties' made at once apparent. He had mounted to the wheel-house, and was asking the pilot: What you doin' that for, Mister?--what good does 't do?' when he was observed by the captain, who said, in a gruff voice: 'Go away from there! Don't you see the sign, 'No talkin' to the man at the hellum?' Go 'way!' Go 'way!' 'Oh! certing-yäes; I only wanted Well, you do know now that you can't talk to him; so go 'way!' With unwilling willingness, the verdant youth came down; and, as it was soon dark, he presently went below; but four or five times before he

to know

A TEMPERANCE STORY.

99

• turned in,' he was on deck, and near the wheel-house, eyeing it with a thoughtful curiosity; but with the captain's public rebuff still in his ears, venturing to ask no questions. In the first gray of the dawn, he was up, and on deck; and after some hesitation, perceiving nobody near but the pilot, who was turning the wheel, as when he had last seen him, he preferred his 'suppressed question' in the oblique style peculiar to his region: Wal, goin' it yit ha? — been at it all night? - a-screëwin on her up? eh?' What vague conjectures must have bothered the poor querist's brain, during the night, may be partly inferred from the absurd but 'settled conviction' to which he had at length arrived!

'A Temperance Story' relies mainly for its fun, which the Editor seems to enjoy,' upon an ancient JOSEPHUS MILLERIUS. The collateral anecdote, however, toward its close, is not so much amiss. Two young men,' with a humming in their heads,' retire late at night to their room in a crowded inn; in which, as they enter, are revealed two beds; but the wind extinguishing the light, they both, instead of taking, as they supposed, a bed apiece, get backto-back into one bed, which begins to sink under them, and come around at intervals, in a manner very circumambient, but quite impossible of explication. Presently one

100 COMFORT OF COMMON THINGS.

observes to the other: I say, Toм, somebody's in my bed.' 'Is there?' says the other; 'so there is in mine, d—n him! Let's kick 'em out! The next remark was: 'Toм, I've kicked my man overboard.' 'Good!' says his fellow-toper; 'better luck than I; my man has kicked me out — d-d if he has n't-right on the floor!' Their 'relative positions' were not apparent until the next morning.

THERE is a good deal of comfort in Common Things. Is n't there, though? Just rung the sanctum-bell for KITTY to come up and bring us a slice of bread-and-butter. It is after twelve o'clock of a rainy October night; for we are closing the November number, and our self-imposed 'stent' is to get all through before we go to bed. When we take a ‘stent,' we do it. We used to, when hoeing potatoes, 'cutting stalks,' pulling flax, and husking corn in 'the ked❜ntry,' and we can do it yet. Well, KITTY did n't she had retired to the arms of MURPHY.' So we took the candle and went down to the kitchen to help ourselves. It was very clean and neat. A solitary cricket retreated under the range as we entered with our bright Carcel lamp. The white floor was 'swept and garnished;' and the week's 'washing and ironing' hung on the whitepine clothes-horse. How sweet those linen garments smelled! And young KNICK'S''sack,' and little Jose's

come;

A HOG IN ARMOR.

101

pink frock, and the 'wee' one's small stockings, although the wearers themselves were rapt in rosy slumbers up stairs, were not uninhabited, to our eyes, at that moment, though they were hanging in the kitchen. We enjoyed those twinslices of bread-and-butter, with two tender, cross-cut, crumbling pieces of corned-beef sandwiched between, and a pickled walnut. After all, many of our passing enjoyments are made up of trifles like this. Is n't it so

We don't know when we have laughed more heartily than at a sight which we encountered the other day in Broadway. A portly female of the Porcine genus, in a high state of maternal solicitude,' was perambulating slowly along the street, with three hoops around her expanded person. Indeed, she seemed thoroughly secured against any accident in the way of explosion. She was indebted doubtless to the hoops by escaping clandestinely from some 'tight fit' of a barrel into which she had forced herself in search of provant, and which had collapsed upon her person in the larcenous act. By-the-by, 'speaking of pigs,' we perceive that an enterprising Yankee is about revising some of the musty apothegms of the day, and verifying their absurdity. He has already made a whistle out of a pig's tail,' and has a very handsome silk purse nearly completed for a new-year's present, which is fabricated mainly from 'a sow's ear!'