130 FAREWELL TO DOBB'S FERRY. him ver' good; he wash him all out wis de turpentine ! Ah! if I could only catch him!—I would kick him p-l-e-n-t-y!' 'Heavens!' exclaimed JARVIS; can it be possible that that great picture is spoiled? You must have been in a towering passion when it came home in that condition.' 'No, no, Monsieur,' replied the Frenchman, in a lachrymose, pitful tone; 'I am not strong man to be angry-I was s-i-c-k!' It is one of those warm, low-cloudy, fine-rainy days of late October. Young KNICK, an hour ago, in a grassy ravine of a hill-side grove, now almost bereft of its summer honors, helped us to brush together a thick bed of faded leaves; and, on that fragrant couch we have been lying, looking off through the thin blue drizzle upon the dying woods over the Tappaän Zee, and the patches of fall-wheat, of matchless green, that edge them, toward the river. Returning, after much pleasant chit-chat with the little Junior, we find a pacquet of letters and communications from town (to which we did not repair to-day) upon our table; and lo! the first one we open is what HALLECK terms 'A HYMN o'er happy days departed A hope that such again may be.' Our esteemed correspondent has certainly touched us at 132 FAREWELL TO DOBB'S FERRY. But steamer, stage, nor prancing cob, May bear my yearning heart to 'DOBB, "Tied to the roaring city's wheel, Where omnibii their thunders peal; Pent up mid bounds where vice is nursed, Where man with many a care is cursed, One lives amid a seething mob, Half terri Fied with scenes unknown at 'DOBB, 'Shake, shake your lazy sands, O Time! Up the broad Hudson's sparkling track! The vision makes my pulses throb; I bury All work-day thoughts, and muse on 'DOBB, Whoever shall visit 'DOBB's' the ensuing winter, and the pleasant domicil which we inhabited there, will on examination find pieces of Old KNICK.' sticking to the doorposts; retained there in the disparting struggle of the final adieu. NUMBER SIX. THE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK: THE STABAT MATER. CONUNDRUMS · A PRACTI- CAL ONE: A TRIBUTESTO ART WE an WR E derive the following capital anecdote from an es 6 teemed friend who was there,' and who never yet permitted a good thing to escape his observant eye. A stagecoach well freighted with passengers, was once travelling from London to York. Among those on the outside was a dry-looking gentleman in rusty black, and very taciturn. According to custom, he soon got a travelling-name from his dress; and from some accidental whim, the passengers seemed to take a pleasure in playing upon it. Whenever they stopped, there would casual questions be asked: 'Where's the Gentleman in Black?' 'Won't the Gentleman in Black come by the fire?' 'Perhaps the Gentleman in Black would like a bit of the mutton?' In short, the Gentleman in Black became a personage of consequence, 134 THE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK. in spite of his taciturnity. At length, in the middle of the night, crash! went the coach, and the unlucky 'outsides' were sent headlong into the ditch. There was a world of work in repairing damages, and gathering together the limping passengers. Just as they were about setting off, the coachman was attracted by a voice from a ditch, where he found some one, white as a miller from rolling down a chalky bank. The Unknown prayed in piteous voice for assistance. 'Why who the deuce are you?' cried coachee. 'Alas!' replied the other, in a tone half-whimsical, halfplaintive, 'I'm the Gentleman in Black!' ARE not these lines from the 'Stabat Mater' felicitously translated? We have the poem entire, but segregate only the two stanzas which ensue : STABAT mater dolorosa, Juxta crucem lacrymosa, Dum pendebat filius: Pertransivit gladius. O quam tristis et afflicta Fuit illa benedicta, Mater unigeniti : Quæ merebat, et dolebat, Et tremebat; cum videbat Nati poenas inclyti. Although nothing could exceed the simple beauty of |