ditated with much fervor on the charms of the | who trotted through the gate a few rods in advance young schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Web- of him, nodded to the toll gatherer, and kept on ster never spoke nor looked so like an angel as Miss towards the village. Dominicus was acquainted Higginbotham, while defending him from the wrath- with the tollman, and while making change, the ful populace at Parker's Falls. usual remarks on the weather passed between them. Dominicus was now on the Kimballton turnpike, having all along determined to visit that place, though business had drawn him out of the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of the supposed murder, he continued to revolve the circumstances in his mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed. Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveller, it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact; and there was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly questioned. When, to this singular combination of incidents, it was added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's character and habits of life; and that he had an orchard, and a St. Michael's pear tree, near which he always passed at nightfall; the circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of doubtful character, whom he had hired without a recommendation, on the score of economy. "May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike aloud, on reaching the top of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is unhanged, till I see him with my own eyes, and hear it from his own mouth! And as he's a real shaver, I'll have the minister or some other responsible man, for an indorser." "I suppose," said the pedler, throwing back his whiplash, to bring it down like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen any thing of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?" "Yes," answered the toll gatherer. "He passed the gate just before you drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the dusk. He's been to Woodfield this afternoon attending a sheriff's sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat with me; but to-night, he nodded, as if to say, 'charge my toll,'-and jogged on; for wherever he goes, he must always be at home by eight o'clock." "So they tell me," said Dominicus. "I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does," continued the toll gatherer. "Says I to myself, to-night, he's more like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.' The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just discern the horseman now far ahead on the village road. He seemed to recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham; but through the evening shadows, and amid the dust from the horse's feet, the figure appeared dim and unsubstantial; as if the shape of the mysterious old man were faintly moulded of darkness and gray light. Dominicus shivered. "Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other world, by way of the Kimballton turnpike," thought he. He shook the reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance in the rear of the gray old a number of stores and two taverns, clustered round the meeting-house steeple. On his left were a stone wall and a gate, the boundary of a wood lot, beyond which lay an orchard, farther still, a mowing field, and last of all, a house. These were the premises of Mr. Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old highway, but had been left in the background by the Kimballton turnpike. Dominicus knew the place; and the little mare stopped short by instinct; for he was not conscious of tightening the reins. "For the soul of me, I cannot get by this gate!" said he, trembling. "I never shall be my own man again, till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham is hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree!" He leaped from the cart, gave the rein a turn round the gate post, and ran along the green path of the wood lot, as if Old Nick were chasing behind. Just then the village clock tolled eight, and as each deep stroke fell, Dominicus gave a fresh bound and flew faster than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of the orchard, he saw the fated pear tree. One great branch stretched from the old contorted trunk across the path, and threw the darkest shadow on that one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the branch! The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this awful emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed for ward, prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the butt end of his whip, and found not indeed hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree, but trembling beneath it, with a halter round his neck-the old identical Mr. Higginbotham! "Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus, tremulously, "you're an honest man, and I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged, or not?" If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple machinery by which this "coming event was made to "cast its shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr. Higginbotham; two of them, successively, lost courage and fled, each delaying the crime one night, by their disappearance; the third was in the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of Dominicus Pike. It only remains to say, that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into high favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress, and settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves the interest. In due time, the old gentleman capped the climax of his favors, by dying a Christian death, in bed, since which melancholy event, Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton, and established a large tobacco manufactory in my native village. THE GREAT CHARTER CONTEST IN GOTHAM THERE is a particular season of the year in the city of New York, when ragamuffins and vagabonds take a sudden rise in respectability; when a tarpaulin hat is viewed with the same mysterious regard as the crown of an emperor, and the uncombed locks of a wharf rat or river vagrant, looked upon with as much veneration as if they belonged to Apollo in his brightest moments of inspiration. At this singular and peculiar period in the calendar, all the higher classes, by a wonderful readiness and felicity of condescension, step down from their pedestals and smilingly meet the vulgar gentry, half way up, in their progress to the beautiful tableland of refinement and civilization. About this time, gloves go out of repute, and an astonishing shaking of dirty fists takes place all over the metropolis. It is a sight to electrify the heart of a philanthropist to behold a whole community, in a state of such perfect Arcadian innocence, that all meet on terms of familiar affection, where smile responds to smile with equal warmth, though one may dimple a clean countenance, and the other force its pellucid way through a fog of earthly particles. Happy, golden time! Reader, if you chance not to comprehend philosophically this sweet condition of things, be informed that a Charter Election comes on next month! The charter contest of the year eighteen hundred and is perhaps the fiercest on record in the chronicles of New York. Several minor skirmishes took place with regard to aldermen, assessors, and constables, but the main brunt and heat of the engagement fell upon the election of a Mayor to 1838. preside over the portentous destinies of the metropolis during a twelvemonth. It seemed, from the grounds on which it was fought, to be the old battle of patrician and plebeian. On one side, the candidate was Herbert Hickock, Esquire, a wholesale auctioneer and tolerably good Latin scholar; a gentleman who sallied forth every morning at nine o'clock, from a fashionable residence in Broadway, dressed in a neat and gentlemanly suit of black, an immaculate pair of gloves, large white ruffles in his bosom, and a dapper cane in his hand. Opposed to him, as a candidate for the Mayoralty, was a retired shoemaker, affectionately and familiarly known as Bill Snivel. He was particularly celebrated for the amount of unclean garments he was able to arrange about his person, a rusty, swaggering hat, and a rugged style of English with which he garnished his conversation. The great principles on which the warfare was waged were on the one hand, that tidy apparel is an indisputable evidence of a foul and corrupt code of principles; and on the other, that to be poor and unclean, denotes a total deprivation of the reasoning faculties. So that the leading object of the Bill Snivel party seemed to be to discover Mr. Hickock in some act of personal uncleanliness or cacography; while the Hickock party as strenuously bent all their energies to the detection of Mr. Bill Snivel in the use of good English or unexceptionable linen. The names with which they mutually christened each other exhibit the depth and strength of their feelings on this point. The one was known as the Silk-stock ing gentry; the other by the comprehensive appellation of the Loafers. At the approach of a New York charter election, it is truly astonishing how great a curiosity springs up as to the personal habits of the gentlemen presented on either side as candidates. The most excruciating anxiety appears to seize the community to learn certain little biographical incidents as to the birth, parentage, morals, and the every-day details of his life. In truth, on this occasion, the wardrobe of one of the nominees had been so often and so facetiously alluded to by two or three of the newspapers, that the Bill Snivel General Vigilance Committee had felt it their duty to furnish one of their members with a large double telescope -which he planted (by resolution of the Committee), every night and morning directly opposite the chamber window of Herbert Hickock, Esquire, with the laudable purpose of discovering in an authentic way, what were that candidate's habits of dress. A manuscript report of his ingenious observations, it is said, was circulated freely among the members of the committee. No copy, that I have learned, has ever found its way to the press. As every one knows, the advent of an election creates a general and clamorous demand for full-grown young men of twenty-one years of age. To meet this demand, a surprising cultivation of beards took place among the Hickock youth, who happened to want a few days or months of that golden period. Furthermore, a large number of Bill Snivel voters in the upper wards of the city, became suddenly consumptive, and were forced to repair for the benefit of their health to the more southern and genial latitudes of the first, second, and third wards; and the Hickock men residing in those wards were seized as suddenly with alarming bilious symptoms, which compelled them to emigrate abruptly to the more vigorous and bracing regions in the northern part of the island. Pleasant aquatic excursions, too, were undertaken by certain gentlemen of the Bill Snivel tinge of politics (whose proper domicils were at Hartford and Haverstraw), and they came sailing down the North and East Rivers, in all kinds of craft, on visits to their metropolitan brethren, and dropped their compliments in the shape of small folded papers, in square green boxes with a slit in the top. | the Bill Snivel voice resembled that of a cage-full of hungry young tigers slightly infuriated, while the Hickock seemed to be modelled on the clamor of an old lion after dinner. Each meeting had some particular oratorical favorite. In one, a slim man was in the habit of exhibiting a long sallow face at eight o'clock every evening, between a pair of tall sperm candles, and solemnly declaring that-the country was ruined, and that he was obliged to pay twelve and a half cents a pound for liver! At the Bill Snivel, a short, stout man with an immense bony fist, was accustomed about half an hour later to appear on a high platform-and announce in a stentorian voice, that "the people was on its own legs again," which was rather surprising when we know how fond some people are of getting into other people's boots; and that "the Democracy was carrying the country before it," which was also a profound postulate meaning-the Democracy was carrying the Democracy before it-they constituting the country at all times, and the country at all times constituting them! In the mean time, Committee men of all sorts and descriptions are at work in rooms of every variety of wall and dimension. The whole city is covered with handbills, caricatures, manifestoes, exposures, pointed facts, neat little scraps of personal history, and various other pages of diverting political literature. Swarms cluster about the polls; banners stream from windows, cords, and housetops. A little man rides about on the box of an enormous wagon, blowing a large brass trumpet, and waving a white linen flag with a catching inscription-and he labors at the trumpet till he blows his face out of shape and his hat off his head, and waves the flag until it seems to be a signal of distress thrown out by the poor little man with the brass trumpet, just as he has broken his wind and is sinking with exhaustion. Scouring Committees beat furiously through the wards in every direction. Diving, like sharks, into cellars, they bring up, as it were between their teeth, wretched scare-crow creatures who stare about when introduced to daylight, as if it were as great a novelty to them as roast beef. Ascending into garrets, like mounting hawks, they bear down in their clutches trembling old men who had vegetated in those dry, airy elevations apparently during a whole century. Prominent among the bustling busy-bodies of the hour, is Fahrenheit Flapdragon, member of the Hickock General Committee, the Hickock Vigilance Ward Committee, the Advertising Committee, the Wharf Committee, the Committee on Flags and Decorations, the Committee on Tar-barrels and tinder boxes, one of the Grand General Committee on drinking gin-slings and cigar-smoking, and member of the Committee on noise and applause. By dint of energetic manoeuvering, Flapdragon had likewise succeeded in Certain other hundreds of the Bill Snivel men re- being appointed chairman of a single Committee, galed themselves in a similar way, in another large viz.-that on chairs and benches. He attained this oblong room, except that the gentlemen who came enviable elevation (the performance of the arduous forward to them served themselves up in spotted duties of which drew upon him the eyes of the silk handkerchiefs-voices a key louder-noses a whole ward and the carpenter who furnished the thought larger-and faces a tinge redder than their benches!) through the votes of a majority of the rivals. The former occasionally quoted Latin, and Committee of five-one of whom was his brotherthe latter took snuff. With regard to the noises in-law, and the other his business partner. The which now and then emanated from the lungs of casting vote he had himself given judiciously, in his the respective assemblages-there was more music own favor. Fahrenheit Flapdragon bore a conspicin the shouts and vociferations of the Hickock uous part in the great Charter Contest, now wagmeetings more vigor and rough energy in the Billing between Hickock and Snivel. In fact, he was Snivel. If a zoological distinction might be made, so embarrassed with engagements during this hot To keep up the spirit of the contest, several hundreds of the Silk-stocking men packed themselves regularly every night into a large, oblong room, and presented a splendid collection of fine coats and knowing faces-like a synod of grave herrings in a firkin to the contemplation of sundry small men with white pocket handkerchiefs and bad colds, who, in turn, came forward and apostrophized a striped flag and balcony of boys on the opposite wall. blooded contest election, that he was compelled to furnish himself with a long-legged gray horse early on the morning of the second day, to carry him about with sufficient rapidity from point to point to meet them as they sprang up. The little man, of a truth, was so tossed and driven about by his various self-imposed duties in the committee-rooms, streets, and along the wharves, that he came well nigh going stark mad. During the day, he hurried up and down the streets, from poll to poll, bearing tidings from one to the other-distributing tickets -cheering on the little boys to shout, and placing big men in the passages to stop the ingress of Bill Snivel voters; I say, during the day he posted from place to place on his lank gray nag, with such fury that many sober people thought he had lost his wits, and was hunting for them on horseback in this distracted manner. At night, what with drinking gin-slings and brandy-and-water at the bar to encourage the vagabonds that stood looking wistfully on-talking redhot Hickock politics to groups of four, five, and six -and bawling applause at the different public meetings he attended-he presented at the close of the day's services, such a personal appearance that any one might have supposed he had stayed in an oven till the turning point between red and brown arrived, and then jumped out and walked home with the utmost possible velocity to keep up his color. There are seventeen wards in the city, and every ward has its Fahrenheit Flapdragon. While these busy little committee-men are bustling and hurrying about, parties of voters are constantly arriving on foot, in coaches, barouches, open wagons, and omnibuses, accompanied by some electioneering friend who brings them up to the polls. Every hour the knots about the door swell, until they fill the street. In the interior of the building, meanwhile, a somewhat different scene presents itself. Behind a counter, on three wooden stools, three men are perched with a green box planted in front of the one in the centre, and an officer with a staff at either end. The small piece of green furniture thus guarded is the ballot box, and all sorts of humanity are every moment arriving and depositing their votes. Besides the officers, two or three fierce-looking men stand around the box on either side, and challenge in the most determined manner every suspicious person of the opposite politics. "I challenge that man's vote," says one, as a ragged young fellow with a dirty face and strong odor of brandy approaches. "I don't believe he is entitled to a vote." "Yes, he is," replies another, "I know him-he's a good citizen. But you may swear him if you choose!" At this, the vagabond is pushed up to the counter by one of his political friends-his hat is knocked off by an officer -the chief inspector presents an open Bible, at which the vagabond stares as if it were a stale codfish instead of the gospels-a second friend raises his hand for him, and places it on the book-and the chief inspector is about to swear him-when the Hickock challenger cries out, "Ask him if he understands the nature of an oath!" "What is an oath?" asks the inspector solemnly. "D-n your eyes!" hiccups the young Bill Snivel voter. "Take him out!" shouts the inspector, and the officers in attendance, each picking up a portion of his coat collar, hurry him away with inconceivable rapidity through a back door into the street, and dismiss him with a hearty punch of their staves in the small of his back. All over the city, wherever a square inch of floor or pavement can be obtained-in bar-rooms, hotels, streets, newspaper offices-animated conversations are got up between the Hickock gentry and the Bill Snivel men. "If dandy Hickock gets in," says a squint-eyed man with a twisted nose, "I've got a rooster-pigeon I'll pick his feathers bare, stick a pipestem in his claw, friz his top-knot, and offer him as a stumpcandidate for next Mayor." "Can your rooster-pigeon spell his own name, Crossfire?" asked a tall Hickock street inspector. "If he can't, you'd better put him a quarter under Bill Snivel. It would be as good as an infant school for him!" "I think I'd better take my little Bantam-cock,” retorted the squint-eyed man; "he's got a fine comb which would answer for shirt-ruffles," and the Bill Snivel auditors gave a clamorous shout. "If he's got a comb," said the tall inspector, stooping towards the shouters, "it's more than what Bill Snivel's head has seen this two and forty years!" The Hickock gentry now sent up in turn a vigorous hurrah; and a couple of ragamuffins in the mob, who had been carrying on a little under-dialogue on their own account, now pitched into each other in the most lively manner, and after being allowed to phlebotomize each other very freely, were drawn apart by their respective coat tails, and carried to a neighboring pump. The battle by no means ceases at the going down of the sun; for, besides the two large assemblages to which we have before alluded, there is in each ward a nightly meeting in some small room in the second story of a public house, where about one hundred and fifty miscellaneous human beings are entertained by sundry young attorneys and other spouters, practising the English language and trying the force of their lungs. At these meetings you will be sure (whenever you attend them) to meet with certain stereotyped faces-which are always there, always with the same smiling expression-and looking as if they were parts of the wainscoting or lively pieces of furniture, fixed there by the landlord to please his guests. The smiling gentlemen are office-seekers. In the corner, sitting on a table, you may observe a large puffed-out man, with red cheeks; he is anxious to obtain the appointment of beer-gauger under the corporation. Standing up by the fire place is a man with a dingy face and shivering person, who wishes to be weigher of coal, talking to a tall fellow who stoops in the shoulders like a buzzard, with a prying nose and eye, and a face as hard and round as paving-stone, who is making interest for reappointment as street inspector. There is also another, with a brown, tanned countenance, patriotically lamenting the decline of the good old Revolutionary spirit-who wants the office of leather inspector. The most prominent man at these meetings is orator Bog, a personage whose reputation shoots up into a wonderful growth, during the three days of election, while his declamation is fresh, but which suddenly withers and wilts away, when the heat of the conflict has cooled. His eloquence is the peculiar offspring of those sunny little Republican hot beds, ward meetings. He has just described the city as "split like a young eel from nose to tail by the diabolical and cruel knife of those modern Catilines," the alder men of the city-they having recently run a main street through it north and south. "These are the men," he exclaimed with an awful smile on his countenance, "these are the men that dare insult the democracy by appearing in publiclike goslings-yes, like goslings!-with such articles as these on their legs!" and thrusting a pair of tongs-heretofore dexterously concealed under the skirts of his coat-into his hat, which stood upon the table before him, he drew out a pair of fine silk stockings, and swung them triumphantly over the heads of the mob, which screamed and clamored with huge delight at the spectacle. "And such articles as these!" he shouted, producing from the same receptacle a shirt about small enough for a yearling infant, with enormous green ruffles about large enough for a Patagonian. "Look at it!" cried Bog, throwing it to one of the mob. | ecstatic Bill Snivel men, and a hearty burst of laughter broke forth. Several lusty vagabonds came near going into fits, when orator Bog facetiously though gravely stopped his nose with his thumb and finger, and remarked, "I think some one has brought a skunk into the room!" The last hour of the last day of the Great Charter Contest has arrived. Every carman, every merchant's clerk, every negro with a freehold, every stevedore, every lamp-lighter, every street-sweeper, every vagrant, every vagabond has cast his vote. Garret, cellar, sailor's boarding-house, shed, stable, sloop, steamboat, and dock-yard, have been ransacked, and not a human being on the great island of Manhattan has escaped the clutch of the Scouring and District Committees of the two great contending parties. At this critical moment, and as the sun began to look horizontally over the chim"Smell of it!" cried Bog. ney-tops with a broad face, as if he laughed at the "It's scented with assy-fetid-y!" vociferated the quarrels of Hickock gentry and Bill Snivel men, "It's pine shavings painted green," shouted the mob. |