necessity. In great emergencies, I have rendered myself agreeable to my neighbours by putting a new neap into a tipe cart, and Nabby and myself always contrive to dew our own chores, and kinder live along, without the expense or vexation of hired help; and we strive to bring up our children with good manners, and in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

1

ANNALS OF THE SHOP.

In a western village, designated in an early edition of "The Traveller's Guide" as Thoroughwortville, but recently, by legislative wisdom, renamed Salubriopolis, there lived a physician who attained much professional distinction. His name was Bibo Oxygen. He might have grown as rich as he was skilful by good husbandry-in professional parlance, the term husbandry should be understood. But, in the honest simplicity of his soul, or in the simple honesty of his heart, he would never prescribe drugs for those imaginary infirmities with which the human family are afflicted. When a patient, borne down with hypochondria or plain blue devils, presented himself, it was his custom to apply a few pointed anecdotes, and on suitable occasions he would dose him with ridicule, until his imagination was purged of all wild vagaries, and healed of monstrous fancies. As Doctor Oxygen deservedly held a high place in the community he physicked, he enjoyed the office of justice of peace, notary public, postmaster, colonel of eight train-bands, and representative of his county in the general assembly. His various civil offices, and his professional pursuits, were indicated by the lettering and gilding around his door and windows; and that of his military rank was hinted at by the blade that hung in the postoffice, and a dusty stake-and-rider hat-case that reposed on the summit of an oldfashioned case of drawers. In this post, notary, squire's, doctor's, and colonel's office, the business calls and professional transactions were important and multifarious. One evening's operation will tend to give an imperfect idea of the end and aim of skill and authority, and a record of it follows.

A young gentleman in his saddle before the door, with crape on a white hat, is consulting the doctor on the infantile disease

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of his motherless babe, with one eye twisted across the street towards the window where a seamstress is taking attitudes. Squire," said the sturdy farmer on the threshold, who has no time to enter, "when is that marchant's judgment due? can I get my wheat in before the money is coming?"-"No!" is the answer, "the supreme judges have repealed the stay-law !" Any letters for daddy?" says tow-head. "What is your daddy's name, my son ?"-"Maybe you don't know daddy, when you cured his agy-cake last New-year! My daddy's name is Corn Taylor; I reccon he arn't ashamed of his name !”—“Here is one for Cornelius Taylor."-"Well, maybe it is for daddy; where is it from, squire ?"'--" Postmarked Madison county, Kentucky."—"That's not for daddy; he's from Big Pigeon, Cocke county, Tennessee."

"Colonel," says a free, roistering horseman in a Spanish saddle, exhibiting a stiff red cock's feather in front of a round hat, "when is our officer drill and discipline muster?". '-"Muster courage to take," says the doctor, "a table-spoonful, three times a day."—"Jist reverend, without water, doctor?"—" No letters for Kitty Ann Peavine, squire," inquired a grave old gentleman in jeans. Another applicant interrupted the discourse, and asked for something to cure the nightmare. "I cannot give, but I can take away something that may effect a cure," responded Doctor Oxygen. "Devour less bacon and cabbage, and fewer snaps, and chew better tobacco, and in small broken doses, only a quarter of a cord per diem."—"Thank you, doctor; if any of my people get sick with the chills and dumb agy like this fall, what is good to prevent it?". "Buttermilk and roasting ears, and walk knee-deep in the dew barefoot. It is strange that you should ask that question at your time of life !"-" Squire, I want to get this letter into the postoffice," says Kinkey, "to go to Old Virginny; missy says she wants it to go fast, cause she's afeard old master is sick on the road; and if it meets him, she wants the stage to stop and give it to him. Here is eighteen pence for postage, and ninepence for stopping the stage.""Doctor," inquired an anxious citizen, “have you got any such truck as cured Mr. Barkey's consumption pains ?"-" Squire,"

inquired a blacksmith with a plough-mould on his shoulder, "when does the Madison mail arrive?" while a village exquisite holds out his hand to get an off-hand prescription for his warts. At this moment of general importunity the door is darkened, and the by-standers make room for an elderly woman. "Any baby-draps, doctor, good for teething and the croup? and British oil for rumity pains and spepsy?”

When this rush of versatile applicants was thinning out, a politician of high hopes and aspirations presented himself. "Squire, how is your consarns? hope your family is well; afraid this cool weather will bring early frost; the crops are mighty sorry in our settlement. I reccon if we don't get rain soon the chance for seeding will be slim. The corn is tore down mightily. I myself sha'n't make more than seventy-five bushels to the acre-the coons and other varmints have destroyed a heap. Colonel, the militia-law ought to be amended so as to relieve the people from the hardship of mustering in cropping-time."—" But you should remember, Mr. Allsides," gravely replied the doctor, while a rich vein of comic expression brightened up his careworn visage, "that when the cropping season is over, the beehunting season invites the campaigners against industry to take the field. We cannot meet the views of all parties.”—“ True, very true, squire! I am exactly of your way of thinking, colonel; but, doctor, party spirit should be put down. And, squire, you remember Mr. Jefferson, the great political reformer, says, 'We are all federalists, we are all republicans; and, colonel, patriotism teaches us to make sacrifices; and when citizens get used to it, like the Irishman did to hanging in Lord Norbury's time, the loss of one leg in battle teaches him to shed the other with Christian patience and philosophic fortitude. How do you think I'll run in your village, doctor?"-" Run mad, probably," was the reply.

At a small pot-house grocery or dead-fall of the village, where the foregoing fragment was picked up, there was a lingerer, a member of the human family, whose personal appearance and propensities fixed upon him the cognomen of "the spectre gambler." Disease had made such inroads on his attenuated frame,

that the effort of throwing a card extorted a groan; and a gurgling laugh, when he swept off the coins before him, threw him into a convulsive cough, that almost rendered him speechless. He was exceedingly irritable in his gaming, and those who played with him who were less honest than himself, while feloniously winning his money, occasionally merited and drew down upon themselves his bitterest maledictions. In these conflicts, when he projected his tall, gaunt person from his seat, with uplifted crutch to punish scientific robbery, he seemed the leader of a column in the general resurrection. These wranglings at midnight, the jingling of coins and tumblers on the table, and an occasional bacchanal song echoed through the nostrils of a spectator of the gaming-table, would at intervals arouse all the village dogs, whose howlings marred the slumbers of innocence, and broke the repose of toil-worn artisans. Such was the untiring passion of the gamester for play, that he gave to exhausted nature no repose. When, with the temporary support of oft-repeated stimulants, he had tired out one card-party after another, he was accustomed to sink into spasmodic slumber on a rude settee, where he might be observed in the morning, muttering curses on the cards, ill luck, and the human family. On one occasion, and it was on the day that the spectre departed from the village, an early visiter at the apothecary's shop, adjoining the grocery, looked into the next apartment, and there beheld a practical satire painfully illustrated. The gambler was sitting nearly erect in an easy-chair at the table which had been the night before surrounded with a dissolute circle of associates. Half a dozen tumblers, with heeltaps, remained on the table. A pack of cards was scattered over the benches and floor, torn and soiled; a few cigars remained, and one of the candles was still faintly flickering in the socket. This was not all. Some reckless wag, accidentally a moral satirist, had taken from the repository of the apothecary an anatomical preparation, with the arterial system preserved, and, having wrapped an overcoat around it, had set it up in a chair opposite the slumbering gamester. The entrance of the grocer, and the grating hinges of the stove-door as he stirred the embers there, aroused likewise the