DEATH OF HONORA EDGEWORTH. 87

never crossed the scope of my vision. Howe declared him emphatically 'the ugliest man that ever lived;' whereupon my friend Toм offered to wager a half dozen of champagne that he had seen a worse one in the steerage. The bet was at once accepted, and Toм started for his man, who was to be brought up for comparison. He found the fellow a bit of a wag, as an intolerably homely man is apt to be, and, after the promise of a 'nip,' nothing loth to exhibit himself. As they entered the cabin door, my friend, with an air of conscious triumph, turned to direct our attention to his champion, when he discovered the fellow trying to insure success by making up faces. ' St - st - st - stop!' said he; 'no - no — none of that! You st-st - stay just as God Almighty made you! You cacaca-ca-can't be beat! And he was n't!

Is N'T this a touching picture of the death of HONORA EDGEWORTH, as described by her husband? It so strikes us: after having sat up all the night, I was suddenly called at six o'clock in the morning. Her sister was with her. The moment that I opened the door, her eyes, which had been fixed in death, acquired sufficient power to turn themselves toward me with an expression of the utmost tenderness. She was supported on pillows. Her left arm hung over her sister's neck, beyond the bed. She smiled, and

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EXCUSES FOR DRINKING.

breathed her last! At this moment I heard something fall on the floor. It was her wedding-ring, which she had held on her wasted finger to the last instant; remembering with fond superstition the vow she had made, never again to lose that ring but with life. She never moved again, nor did she seem to suffer any struggle.' 'They loved in life, and in death they were not divided!'

In a certain town in New-Hampshire, a certain inhabitant thereof required for his comfortable enjoyment at least a pint of white-faced New-England,' daily. He had become reduced in his pockets, so that it became necessary for him, like the Israelites of old, to procure somehow a double portion on the day before the Sabbath, that he might quietly enjoy his church, of which he was a constant attendant. On one Saturday he had been very unfortunate; for the shades of evening began to fall, and yet he had not gathered his spiritual' manna for the day of rest. A neighbor at that moment requested him to throw some wood into his shed; and after the small job was completed, gave him a few cents.. He saw that the old fellow looked sad and unsatisfied, and said to him: 'Is n't that enough for the work? Why, you can get half-a-pint with that money; and can't you keep Sunday on that?" Why, I suppose I could, 'Squire, but then,' (looking up with a

'OLD MURPHY' OF THE MOHAWK. 89

disconsolate visage,) but then, 'Squire, how would it be kept?' This anecdote by a clever correspondent reminds us of another, which we shall venture to relate in this connection, though it must needs suffer by the juxtaposition. Mr. G——, who had by degrees become so attached to his cups that he could not comfortably go by eleven o'clock without his 'nip' of brandy, and who was yet anxious to avoid the suspicion of being an habitual drinker, was in the habit daily of inventing some excuse to the bar-keeper and those within hearing. He had used up all the stereotyped reasons, such as 'a slight pain,' a 'a kind of sinking,' not 'feeling right,' etc., etc. One Saturday, at the usual hour, he called for his brandy-and-water, saying, 'I am extremely dry; I am going to have salt fish for dinner!' 'No excuse was better than none,' he probably thought.

ONE of the earliest settlers of old Schoharie was a man named MURPHY, more familiarly known as 'Old MURPHY.' He was a terror to the Indians and their sworn enemy, for he had suffered much from their robberies, and wanton destruction of his crops and cattle. But his most deadly hate arose from the murder of his two brothers; for which act he solemly swore to devote his life to their extermination. 'Old MURPHY' was a wily enemy, as the Indians had well ascertained; and they sought his life by all

90

'OLD MURPHY' OF THE MOHAW K.

possible artifice and strategy. On one occasion their wiles came near being successful. MURPHY had a cow, which wandered from his cabin during the day to browse in the woods, with a bell suspended from her neck to indicate her whereabout; returning always at night to be milked, and with 'udders all drawn dry' to stand and 'inly ruminate' by the hut until morning called her to sally forth again. One evening she failed to return; another day passed, and with it the hour when the kye came hame ' usually, but she came not. with foul play, MURPHY

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Fearing that she had met started, with his rifle on his

All at once he stopped

shoulder, to look her up,' following the direction she was taking when she left the hut. After several hours of fruitless pursuit, the faint sound of her familiar bell in the distance gladdened his ear. 'It's all right!' said he, in his delight at finding her; and he rapidly neared the spot whence the sound proceeded, a thicket of close undergrowth, in the heart of the forest. short. That is 'Old Spot's bell,' said he, 'but it's not on her neck; she do n't swing her bell in that way when she browses. There's mischief here! Cautiously approaching the spot whence the slow and regular 'ting-a-ling' proceeded, he saw at some sixty yards distant two Indians seated upon an old mossy log, peering intently now and then into the recesses of the wood, and at intervals of three or four minutes slowly swinging the cow-bell, which

THE FEMALE SMUGGLER.

91

they thought would bring 'Old MURPHY' into their toils, as a bird hasteth to the snare.' But it was his hour of joy, not theirs. He watched the movements of the red rascals as a cat watches a mouse when safe in her claws. Secure from observation behind a large tree, he selected the 'bell-wether,' and with deliberate aim sent a bullet through his heart. The Indian uttered one shriek, sprang three feet or more upward, and dropped dead beside the log upon which he had been sitting. His comrade looked round in amazement to gather the direction of the shot, and then shouldered the dead body of his comrade, and was moving off, when a second shot from the musket

which MURPHY had by this time

loaded, laid him and his There were two withered

dead companion lifeless together. scalps hanging on each smoky jamb of Old MURPHY'S fire-place for more than twenty years: and he always regarded them with a 'grim smile' when he was rehearsing the history of their acquisition.

'Poetry Run Mad' is inadmissible, on two accounts. In the first place, it strikes us we have met parts of it at least before; and in the second, the style has 'outlived our liking.' Nobody but HooD manages well this ragged species of verse; a very clever specimen of which is contained in his Custom-House Breeze,' the story of a lady

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