In reply, I expressed a wish that the animal might stand there as long as was convenient to him, and undergo a much more unpleasant operation afterwards. Having thus relieved my injured feelings, I was proceeding to crowd all sail for the Albion, when a stout lad came to the rescue.

"Pleaze, zur, Oi knows t' auld horse."

"Oh, you do know him? well, I wish you joy of your acquaintance."

"B'longs tauld Measter Stoiles, zur. Shall Oi tawk him whoam ?"

"Yes, take him away, and tell Mr. Styles to send in his bill and ." It is unnecessary to repeat the conclusion of the sentence. Persons who are much excited sometimes talk inconsiderately.

"Aw, never fear, zur, t' auld gentleman 'll zend 'um in fast enough."

FYTTE THE FOURTH.

Next morning between the first egg and the second cup of tea, a small document was handed to me. I glanced at it, and handed it over to Peters, who read as follows:

"Leeds, July 2, 1843.

L. 1

Benson, Esq., to Ralph Styles, Dr.,
To horse and chaise to Tadcaster, .
To breakage and damage of horse,

"Dear droive, rayther!"

00

L. 1 10 O

L. 2 10 0

Received payment."

"Wait a minute, Fred, my boy, till you see the other side of the ledger. Waiter! Pen, ink and paper!" The stationary was brought. "What be that you're wroitin', Carl?"

"Read it, Fred;" and Peters read.

"Leeds, July 2, 1843.

Ralph Styles, to Carl Benson, Dr. to
Surgeon's bill for damages inflicted

by his horse, .

Per Contra,

By bill delivered,

Balance due Mr. Benson.

L. 3

30

My Pylades looked half a dozen notes of interrogation. I rose and limped across the room.

"What is the matter wi' you?"

"Am I very lame, Fred?"

"Awful!"

"That'll do then." I inquired of the porter Mr. Styles' locality, and having ascertained that it was not farther off than a cripple might manage to hobble, gradually worked my way thither. In a small office sat a large man of the ordinary Yorkshire type. "Zurvant, zur," said he, as I entered with an emphatic limp, and a ferocious aspect.

"Are you Mr. Ralph Styles? Because, if you are, here's your bill and here's mine."

"Aw! you be the chap that had my horse yesterday, be you?"

"I am that unfortunate man. (O-oh! my leg!") "Noice job you made of it. T' horse has the heaves." "Has the heaves, has he? I'm glad of it, (crescendo,) I hope he'll get the bots and a few more nice little complaints. I wish that horse was dead!" And down came my fist on the desk, nearly knocking the inkstand up into Mr. Style's nose. "O-oh! my leg, again!" and I stooped down to rub the member in question.

"Zure, zur, I hope ye be na vera mooch hoort." Styles looked rather alarmed.

"I am very much hurt; shan't be able to attend to business properly for three months, However, I won't say anything about that, but if you don't pay my doctor's bill, I'll have satisfaction of you if there's any law in the land, that is. I'll teach you to give two quiet young gentlemen such a horse as that." And very quiet this young gentleman looked.

"Now, zur, Oi wants to do what's faier mysel, I does, but you caun't expect me in faierness to pay your doctor's bill. But Oi'll tell you what Oi will do. Pay me hauf o' moy bill and we'll be quits."

"Ah, you mean to say that you'll take off half of your bill, if I take off half of mine, which leaves"

"Na, Oi did na zay that, zur, Oi'll tawk off hauf o' moine and zay nothink about yourn, ye know."

"H-em-em!" I leaned on the desk a few seconds in a thoughtful attitude. "I don't want to go to law

about a trifle. You mean to say that you'll take off half of your bill and receipt it in full, if I say nothing about mine ?"

"Zactly zo, zur."

"Here it is then!" and I planked a sovereign and two half crowns, while Mr. S. on his part made his original performance complete by adding to it the magic words "Ralph Styles." And never had two words a more magic effect, for no sooner was the exchange made, and the important scrap of paper safely pocketed, than I cut an exuberant pigeonwing, and followed it up by shooting across the little room at one glissade.

It's astonishing how much better my leg feels," and I let off a few more capers. Styles looked on with a very puzzled expression. "Oi doan't understand this," said he at length, "pray, zur, be ye hurt, or be ye not?"

"I'm not hurt," said I, "thank Providence, and no thanks to your horse. But let this be a warning to you how you put that brute before a Christian again, or there'll be manslaughter some day."

The Yorkshireman was utterly dumbfounded. My coolness had stumped him completely. For at least three minutes he gazed at me, open-eyed and open-mouthed. Then broke forth, spite of himself, this most unwilling and mortifying confession, "Well, I be done!"

And so is

CARL BENSON.

POOR OLD CHARLEY.

Knickerbocker, July 1853.

CLARA rushed into my room, her fair hair floating down her shoulders, her little feet in slippers, and her dressing-gown wrapped hastily round her little figure.

'What is it?" I asked, starting half conscious out of a heavy, summer-morning sleep, with a dim fear that the baby might be ill or the house on fire.

'One of the horses is dead! it must be Charley! They brought him out of the stable just now, and he laid himself down and died.'

I tumbled up somehow and ran to the window. Of course my room commanded the stable-yard, but one horse-chestnut, of untimely luxuriance, had popped a big leafy bough just between my point of vision and the spot where the unfortunate deceased lay, so that I could barely discern two hoofs and a nose. With a speed that emulated my muchabhorred and shudderingly-remembered New-Heaven toilettes, (in those dreary college-days when we had fifteen minutes to dress in, without light or fire, on a New-England winter-morning, the thermometer as low down as it could go.) I sprang into the nearest habiliments, precipitated myself down stairs, and appeared upon the scene. Yes, there he lay, poor old Charley, fearfully swollen, (it was inflammation of the lungs, so far as our veterinary knowledge enabled us to judge;) around his half-open mouth were some dark stains of the grass, where Tom had been trying to bleed him: it was no use.

'He seemed all right last night, Sir,' said the groom: (that I knew myself, having seen him at seven.) "This morning, when I took him out, he rolled right over, and choked, and swelled, and died in a minute, as you may say. And,' continued Tom, as he saw me regarding the body with a puzzled air, I sent Mike off for old Cæsar to come and bury him.'

I returned to the house, performed my matutinal ablutions, and went through the ceremony of breakfast, unsentimental as it may seem under the circumstances; then moved back to the stable-yard, and arrived there just as old Cæsar drove in.

Such an apparition I never saw before or since. Imagine a man very short and thick-set, any age you please on the grave side of seventy, but strong and active notwithstanding; a grizzly black face; grizzly white hair and whiskers; long, knotty, prehensile hands, and nails like claws; a hat that resembled a fragment of a very rusty and battered stove-pipe; and clothes they really knock the spots out of my poor pen, so far as doing them justice is concerned. Such variety of wretchedness! They were more like the mysteriously-united collections of rags one reads of in the sketches of Irish travellers, than any thing ever seen in an Anglo-Saxon community. That his cart might not have been painted at some remote era, I will not make bold to affirm; but if it ever

had been overlaid with color, time, weather, and filth had long since rendered that color indistinguishable; a general hue of mud pervaded the establishment. The horse was worthy of the chariot and charioteer: a mere pony in height, of a flea-bitten gray, turned rusty by exposure to the elements. Every rib and bony angle protruded through his frame-work of skin; every joint was swollen to twice its natural size. He had no more tail than a Manx cat; and his head was absolutely fixed between his fore-legs, as if the muscles which raise the neck had lost their power. That old horse alone, if turned out in a conspicuous position, would have been enough to infect a whole landscape with an air of desolation.

As I looked at Cæsar and his fortunes, he seemed to me some evil spirit or gnome, come to snatch away the remains of my poor favorite; a Charon in a cart instead of a boat, who was to bear off Charley to some fearful region where dead horses go. At length I found voice, and demanded his intentions respecting the corpse.

'We used to throw 'em into the river,' said Cæsar, (it was extraordinary to hear him talk like an ordinary person; he ought to have spoken some unnatural jargon, I thought,) but the Corporation won't let us now, so we take 'em somewhere and bury 'em.'

It was said that Cæsar had a peculiar style of burying his subjects; that, in short, he was a Gothamite representative of the European knacker; boiled up the unhappy beasts; made glue and dogs' meat of them; sausages, probably, to some extent perhaps ate them himself. My resolution was taken on the spot.

'Friend Cæsar,' said I, I would n't have Charley thrown overboard if the Corporation asked me to. You shall bury him, but you need not take him any farther than the orchard. We will put him there; he may improve the apple-trees; I understand they put dead cats into grapevine beds sometimes.'

'And sure,' put in Tom with a smile of approbation, 'he was a good horse in his time, and deserves dacent burial all the same as a Christian.

(Christian, as above used, means merely human being, or one of the genus homo. It is not solely an Hibernicism, but an English provincialism also, and as such has