"What's this?" inquired Anthony von Pootherchick, seizing his cudgel.

"It was a cat," replied the greengrocer, "the nicest cat that ever breathed. Look at it now. I come for justice." "And you shall have it," said Great To, grasping Little To by the wrist.

"I did it, grandfather," cried Little To, looking up mildly in the old man's face.

"I know you did, my boy," said Anthony, with much apparent calmness.

"Stop a bit," interrupted the greengrocer; "not that, neighbor Pootherchick; where's your electrifying machine?"

"Ah, a very good idea," said Anthony, and, dragging the alarmed youth to the implement named, he forced him into a chair, and turning the handle of the terrible apparatus fourteen times, gave Little To a shock which sent him off rubbing his elbows savagely, and vowing early revenge. David Gannet waited to witness the administration of this piece of justice, and then, more resolved than ever to invest his twenty pounds in the great lottery that he had seen advertised, returned homeward, to combat the objections of Dame Phœbe. David Gannet was a very long time in bringing his more cautious wife over to his own way of thinking, and inducing her to countenance his ambitious projects; but he harped so much upon the probabilities of success, and used so many skillful arguments to convince her that the step he was about to take was one of the most prudent ones he could devise, that she at length entered fully into her husband's views, and eventually became more enthusiastic in the matter than even the old umbrella-mender himself. As a convincing proof, too, of her sincerity, she went secretly up-stairs to a garret, and putting her hand up the chimney, drew out an old crumpled black stocking, from which she took upward of twenty pounds in bank notes, and then, descending again, put them cheerfully into the hand of David, who, without delay, paid the money in at the lottery-office, and received in return a ticket-the title-deed of his enormous wealth. Dame Phoebe had told him to choose something with a seven in it; so he chose the number seventy-seven, which, through some unfortunate oversight on the part of speculators in general, chanced hitherto to have remained unappropriated. "When is the drawing to take place?" asked Phoebe.

VOL. II, No. 4.—AA

"On Tuesday week," replied David. with the assistance of the slate.

"Tuesday week! I don't like that; it will fall on the first of April."

"That's the very reason they chose it," returned David, rubbing his hands; "don't you see how many fools they make ?" And while Dame Phoebe was nearly choking with the effects of this little piece of pleasantry, David occupied himself in fixing an ivory knob upon a sturdy walking-stick, the property of an elderly gentleman, who growled terribly when he brought it, and would most probably growl terribly again when he came to take it away, if everything was not arranged to. his taste, and within the limits of the half hour he had prescribed for the completion of the undertaking.

As David was thus engaged, Dame Phobe's favorite tortoise-shell cat bounced in at the door in an intense state of palpitation and alarm. As the natural sequel to an incident of this nature, shortly afterward Little To entered also, tossing his square paper cap into the air, and catching it cleverly on his head as he walked. "Now, then, young scapegrace," said David.

"Are you in?" asked Little To. "Why, to be sure-don't you see I am? What do you mean by asking that?" "Grandfather told me to"Tell Anthony I'll be with him in a minute."

"Don't you go to him-he'll come to you."

"O, very well; does he want some more ivory?"

"Yes, but it's not about that; keep him a-talking as long as you can;" and darting an affectionate glance in the direction of the tortoise-shell cat, which was stealthily watching him from under a bedstead, Little To ran off in the direction of his grandfather's shop.

In a few minutes Anthony von Pootherchick arrived. The visit was purely one of kindness. He wished to prevent David from speculating in the great lottery which was occasioning so vast a sensation in the town.

"But it's already done," cried David. "See!" and he drew the ticket from his pocket.

Anthony surveyed it contemptuously. "Do you remember the old proverb?" asked Great To.

"No; what is it, neighbor?" said David, as he clapped a brass virl upon the walking-stick of the irascible elderly gentle

man.

"Fools and their money are soon parted;" and, having suffered his indignation to vent itself thus, Anthony von Pootherchick walked composedly out.

"What's that he said?" eagerly demanded Dame Phoebe, relinquishing the bellows, and putting her hand to her

ear.

"That we're sure to win the great prize," replied David Gannet, making a hideous noise with his file, and communicating a last polish to the virl by means of a little bit of sand-paper.

"We must have a complete turn-out from top to bottom," said David, as he stirred up his tea that evening; these old tables and chairs, and that old Dutch clock wont suit our altered circumstances. I'll have an arm-chair with a red cushion to it, and a round mahogany table with a lion's head carved on each leg, and a respectable clock with a handsome face, and the moon rising above it; and I'll have an elegant looking-glass over the mantlepiece, and a costly carpet on the floor, and beautiful curtains round the window. No more mending umbrellas and stuffing birds after that-I shall have enough to do to stuff myself; and, as for grinding scissors—” He gave the machine a kick as he spoke, which precipitated it noisily into a corner.

A week rolled away. The important day arrived. David, under the careful inspection and superintendence of his wife, dressed himself in his very best, brushed his dingy hat, drew on a pair of discolored gloves, and stood prepared to start.

Stay a bit,” cried old Phœbe. “Take off that yellow neckerchief, and put on the one with spots."

David did as he was desired, and seizing the slate, gave Phœbe the following directions, which she promised scrupulously to observe:

"If things go as I expect they will, I shall not walk home, mark you. I shall ride in a sedan-chair. Watch for me at a top window, and when you see the sedan-chair turning the corner you will know I am coming. Then throw up the window instantly, and bundle all our old furniture you can lay your hands on into the street; spare nothing; out with it,

dame. You understand, do you? Very well, so now good-by until I return,”—and away went David Gannet, already in imagination the possessor of an amount of wealth which baffled the powers of arithmetic.

David Gannet, the old soldier, marched away at a double quick step, and walked into the town. He was in wonderful spirits; he felt like a man who had inhaled the laughing-gas. His head and thoughts were in the clouds, and as he tramped along the resounding footway, he brought the end of his iron-tipped stick down upon it with an energy that struck fire from the stones. He soon arrived at the large building in which the lottery was to take place. A dense crowd of people had collected here. Hope and eager expectation sat on every face. Mirth and laughter resounded from the walls. Nobody looked sad, for nobody was yet a loser by the great lottery.

"What are they laughing at, I wonder?" muttered David Gannet to himself; “do they all expect to win?" and for a moment the possibility of a failure on his own part occurred to him. He grew chill from top to toe at the bare thought of it; but roused himself, and anxiously awaited the opening of the proceedings. He did not wait long. A boy in a blue dress (David observed that he was blindfold, and had one hand tied behind him) dipped his naked arm into a revolving box, drew out a ticket, and submitted it to a clerk, who called its number; upon which a second boy on the opposite side of the room drew from his box a ticket also, and submitted it to another clerk, who cried, “Blank.” The same ceremony was repeated twenty times, and then a prize of two hundred and fifty pounds turned up. The announcement of his success was hailed with an immediate cheer, and the hand of the fortunate individual was shaken by his friends, while those whose tickets had been pronounced blank took the opportunity of slipping quietly away, with faces as blank as their tickets.

"Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank; why, they're nearly all blank," cried David; "it's rather different from what I expected; and what if mine should turn out to be a blank? I had better be moving toward the door."

“Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, fifty times in succession, and then

a prize of five hundred pounds. "Come, that's worth having,” said David; "five hundred pounds is a good round sum, but, after all, it's a mere trifle to what I expect to get. Ha! what did I hear? Yes," cried David aloud, "that's my number gentlemen, if you please; I am number seventy-seven."—" Blank,” was the reply, and poor David Gannet fell down flat upon his face. He might have been shot. The prevailing notion was that he was dead, but this was proved to be a mistake. David had merely fainted from nervous excitement. His case provoked much commiseration; but he was rather in the way, so the chief clerk of the lottery referred to his books, and finding the umbrella-mender's name and address, issued an order for him to be conveyed safely home. David Gannet's house, however, happening to lie at some distance, and a disengaged couch not being procurable just then, they put him carefully into a sedan-chair, which some humane person proffered for the occasion, and away the two bearers trudged with their load.

Dame Phoebe, like a wary sentinel, had been looking out of the window for upward of an hour. The better to fulfill her engagement, with the assistance of a neighbor, she had collected the whole of the household effects into one room, a garret, and was now patiently awaiting the appearance of the sedan-chair. At length, as she was on the point of giving way to despair, she saw the long-looked-for sedan turn the appointed corner! In an instant up went the window, and down toppled the furniture in a perfect avalanche upon the pavement below. Chairs, tables, lookingglasses, wash-hand basins, warming-pans, fire-irons, and fenders-down they went, bump, bump, bump-crash, crash, crash. The irascible elderly gentleman, who brought the walking-stick to have a knob put to it, chanced to be passing at the moment, and he looked wrathfully up to see from whence this shower of missiles came; but the nozzle of a pair of kitchen bellows hit him over the eye, and, while he lay sprawling, a piece of crockery, falling upon the center of his back, nearly broke the spine. A yellow-whiskered cheesemonger rushed from his shop at the next door, and held up his hand deprecatingly to Dame Phœbe; but the corner of a wash-hand stand took his chin, and hurled him to a distance of several yards. A corpulent chemist from

the opposite side of the street rushed over, with the view of staying the havoc and stopping the outrage; but a large heap of drugget falling at the moment, like a prophet's mantle, enveloped him in its folds, and he was utterly extinguished. And all this time, and in the midst of all this confusion, there was David Gannet, who had just recovered his senses, looking out at the sedan window, and calling at the very top of his voice, and making signals to the deaf Phoebe to suspend further demonstrations of joy; but Phœbe was in too high a paroxysm of bliss to attend to anything that was transpiring below, and it was not till David Gannet himself had rushed wildly up the stairs, and actually seized her by the two wrists, that she could be got thoroughly to comprehend the umbrella-mender's meaning, and desist from the work of destruction. Then the dismal truth flashed upon her, and together the unfortunate pair bewailed the ruin their imprudence had dragged down upon them.

While they were thus weighed to the earth, and in the very midst of their despondency and grief, that excellent man and good neighbor, Anthony von Pootherchick, having heard of this couple's misfortunes, had the philanthropy to pay them a visit. He was not one of those provoking, though perhaps wellintending people, who, when your prospects have miscarried, shrug their shoulders, and cry, "I told you so," and wonder why you didn't follow their advice. He said nothing at all; he merely looked round him, saw how matters stood, and, going quietly away, instantly set afoot a subscription, which in less than two days amounted to nearly forty pounds, and quite established David Gannet in business again. But what do you think was the result of this praiseworthy conduct on the part of Anthony von Pootherchick? The whole of the time which he spent in benevolently collecting money for David Gannet, that incorrigible imp, Little To, spent in solving the mystery of thunder-powder, and succeeded in blowing the roof quite off one of the pyrotechnist's outbuildings. Anthony was in a pretty rage when he heard of it, and hastened home with the view of inflicting proper chastisement upon the culprit; but, on arriving there, it soon became apparent that Little To, dreading the results of his indiscretion, had already privately withdrawn himself. Two whole

days did Little To remain secreted, but, toward the middle of the third, he once more presented himself in the gloomy shop of the old optician, donned his paper cap, tied on his apron in a mild and comfortable manner, and began to grind away at a mortar full of saltpeter, a task that Great To had imposed upon his grandson the morning of the day on which the latter had absconded. The gloom of his laboratory at first prevented Anthony von Pootherchick, who had just been getting his dinner, from perceiving his grandson; but the moment he had done so, he walked toward him with a deliberate sort of air, which Little To thought portended no particular amount of good to himself. So he dropped the heavy pestle into the mortar, forced a large fat tear into the corner of either eye, and cried, "I did it, grandfather." Perhaps this well-timed but artful acknowledgment acted as a sedative upon Great To's rising choler, or perhaps his dinner had put him in good humor; at all events he exhibited no anger, but on the contrary cried: "That's a good lad, always speak the truth; I'll forgive you because you didn't lie, and the incident of the thunder-powder passed altogether from the good old man's memory. Subsequently to this, Little To became a great chemist, and dabbled to a considerable extent in astronomy. Indeed, it is only a few years since he was supposed by philosophers to have discovered a new star; though, on further investigation, this was proved to be less a new star than an old blinking gas lamp, which occupied a conspicuous position upon a distant acclivity. Little To's abilities as a chemist, however, have never once been called into question, and he is justly looked upon as one of the greatest luminaries of the present age.

As for David Gannet and Dame Phoebe, they did not invest any more money in lotteries, but continued to live comfortably upon what little they possessed, till death gave them something better. David of ten afterward acknowledged that his lottery speculation was a stupid business, and, in order that the recollection of it might act as a check upon him in future, he bought a half-pint china cup, with a handsome picture of the "Dog and his shadow" emblazoned upon the front of it; and this always during the old soldier's lifetime stood upon his mantle-piece.

and few roads of any considerable distance on which wheeled carriages could pass; consequently the transportation of almost everything was on horseback. Under these circumstances I could take with me to my distant destination only a few clothes and some choice books. A pair of saddlebags contained my entire wardrobe and library. The latter consisted of a Bible, Methodist Discipline, Hymn-book, one volume of Wesley's Sermons, and a Greek Testament. With this outfit, for the whole year, I turned my face to the Far West.

The morning of my departure was somber, and indicative of rain. Late at night on the second day's ride, wet, weary, and faint with hunger, I reached the waters of the Mississippi at the mouth of Red River, and was obliged to pass the night at a tavern. I think I never felt before so keenly the want of something refreshing as I did at that hour, and scarcely ever had I been thrown into a place which af forded so few of the sheer necessaries of life. Of whisky only was there a profusion. All that I could procure was some corn bread, the meal of which had been probably ground in a still-mill, and baked in the ashes, a bit of damaged pork, and something which they called coffee. And these I got from the slaves, who really sympathized with me in my sufferings, and yielded me all the aid and comfort which were within their narrow means.

Weariness and partial fever prevented sleep, and the next morning the day was cold and cheerless. After waiting and pleading with my host till nearly ten o'clock, and paying him enormously, he allowed his slaves to help me across the Mississippi, and soon I entered its great swamp. This is, perhaps, the most dreary and desolate place in the world. To form an adequate conception of it, one must have been at some time in it. It overwhelms one on every side by its extent and stillness. It is formed by the melted snows which flow from the higher latitudes of the continent, and the spring rains which fall in the immense valley lying between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. The

waters of this vast basin, pressing themselves in their southern course, and failing to empty themselves sufficiently fast into the ocean, are compelled to force their way over the banks, and thus they form an inundation or swamp more than seven hundred miles in length, and from twentyfive to sixty miles in breadth. When they begin to approach this region, the beasts, birds, and even the reptiles, retire before them, and flee to the higher and distant lands on the west. Nothing is now to be seen in it but one continuous sheet of water, extending and spreading itself over thousands of square miles, and covering almost everything from five to forty feet under its surface. The tall and shapeless cypress is nearly the only tree which peers above this mighty inundation. Formerly, in the spring season, before steam had achieved its triumphs, the mailboats and other conveyances, in communicating with the then solitary West, were obliged to pass through this swamp; and in the autumn, when the waters had retired, one could trace their passage twenty or forty feet over his head by the limbs of the trees which the boatman had cut away in navigating his vessel through their tops.

About the first of June the overflow reaches its highest point, after which it gradually recedes until the last of August, when it falls again within the banks of the river. And now an almost vertical sun soon dries up the immense swamp, exhaling from this enormous accumulation of vegetable matter a miasma which often carries pestilence and death to the inhabitants on the higher lands.

The impressions produced on one, while in this region, are often various and opposing. That which, at the entrance, seemed vast and overwhelming, in a few hours' ride loses most of its inspiration, and soon becomes familiar and gloomy. And now there is nothing to variegate the monotonous scene. The 'imagination becomes depressed, and seeks in vain for something by which it can relieve itself. You are now in the empire of stillness and uniformity. There is nothing which has life to be seen or heard: no flitting bird nor moving creature to beguile the tedium of the miry way. And should the wind move the lofty cypresses, the sound in their tops seems mournful, and in dying away makes the solitude more solitary.

I had traveled but a few hours in this swamp when I was met by the chilling wintry rains peculiar to that climate, and was, shortly after, brought down with a severe ague. Soon the fever became violent, and I was obliged to dismount and screen myself under a frail umbrella at the root of the driest tree I could find. Although almost every step had been through mud, yet there was no water. At this time I would have given gold for a bowlful. As it was, I could only slake my thirst by the application of wet leaves to my feverish lips; and for this I was thankful.

I was sick, alone, without food or water, and in doubt whether I could ever find my way out of this wilderness. I had believed myself called to preach the gospel, had left all that I had ever loved before to do it, and was now on my way to make full proof of those impressions which had followed me for seven years. It was suggested to me that I had mistaken my call -that I was deluded-was foolish to relinquish a lucrative occupation for an enterprise so profitless and visionary-and, above all, that God was in this way hedging up my course.

I endeavored to review the whole of my former life. In the examination, I found that my motives had been upright; my only object had been to glorify God, and, if possible, to do good to my fellowmen; and if I were mistaken I had followed the best light I had. I did not-I could not feel condemned. After prayer, the light from above soon dispelled my doubts, and melted me down into sweet submission. I was then willing to die there, or anywhere else, or in any other way, to glorify God.

My fever was still high; but the day was passing away, and the approach of night might bring with it, I knew not what —perhaps the return of those ferocious beasts which had fled to the borders of the swamp. I arose and pushed on as fast as my half-famished horse could bear me. But soon the path, which had never been plain, became dim, and finally lost itself entirely in the leaves. Thus I was now wholly astray, and concluded that I must lay out for the night. But I was kept calm, and confided in Providence. Pressing on for some time without a path to direct me, at last I discovered something like higher ground, and soon felt that my