sat down with Cato, as he was called, square on the deck, his feet against my feet, with a wooden bowl of potatoes between our legs, and began to scrape off the skins. While thus employed, a boat came alongside with several visiters. One inquired for a farmer's servant, wishing to engage one; another for a housemaid; and the third, thanks be and praise! asked if there was a nail-maker on board. My greedy ear snapped the word, and looking up, I answered, ‘I am one.' 'You !' replied he, looking down as if I was a fairy; 'You! can you make nails?' 'I'll wager a sixpence,' (all I had) was my answer,' that I'll make more nails in one day than any man in America.' This reply, the manner of it, and the figure of the bragger, set all present into a roar of laughter.'

A curious sample of Scotch thrift was shown when he first opened a little shop, without capital to buy stock. Brick-bats, covered with ironmonger's paper, with a knife or fork tied on the outside, were ranged on the shelves like an imposing array of new cutlery; and a dozen snuff boxes, or shaving boxes, made a great show, fastened on round junks of wood.

But although it must be allowed that this was a clever and innocent artifice,' says Lawrie Todd, ' yet like other dealers in the devices of cunning, I had not been circumspect at all points; for by mistake, I happened to tie a round shaving box on a brick subterfuge, which a sly, pawky old Scotchman, who sometimes stepped in for a crack, observed.

'Ay, mon,' says he, 'but ye hae unco' queer things here. Wha ever saw a four corner't shaving box?'. Whereupon we had a hearty good laugh. 'Od,' he resumed, but ye're an auld farrant chappy, and no doot but ye'll do weel in this country, where pawkrie is no' an ill nest-egg to begin with.'

There is, however, no 'pawkrie' about his flowers and garden-seeds; they are genuine, and the best of their kind; as their celebrity throughout the country abundantly testifies.

I begged of the gardener a single sprig of acacia, whose light, feathery, yellow foliage looked like a pet plaything of the breezes; and which for the first time enabled me to understand clearly Moore's poetic description of the Desert, where the 'Acacia waves her yellow hair.'

I likewise took with me a geranium leaf, as a memento of the rose-geranium which Grant Thorburn accidentally bought in the day of small beginnings, and which proved the nucleus of his present floral fame, and blooming fortune. The gardener likewise presented us with a bouquet of dahlias, magnificent enough for the hand-screen of a Sultana; but this politeness I think we owed to certain beautiful young ladies who accompanied us.

Altogether, it was a charming excursion; and I came away pleased with the garden and its environs, and pleased with the old gentleman, whose dwarflike figure disappointed me agreeably; for, from his own description, I was prepared to find him ungainly and mis-shapen. I no longer deem it so very marvellous that his Rebecca should have preferred the poor, canny little Scotchman, to her rich New-York lover.

As I never deserved to be called 'Mrs. Leo Hunter,' you will, perhaps, be surprised at the degree of interest I express in this man, whose claims to distinction are merely the having amassed wealth by his own industry and shrewdness, and having his adventures told by Galt's facetious pen. The accumulation of dollars and cents, I grant, is a form of power the least attractive of any to the imagination; but yet, as an indication of ability of some sort, it is attractive to a degree; and moreover there is something in mere success which interests us-because it is a stimulus which the human mind spontaneously seeks, and without which it cannot long retain its energies. Added to this, there is a roseate gleam of romance, resting on the shrewd Scotchman's life.

First, there is a sober sentiment, a quaint, homely pathos, in his account of his first love, which wraps the memory of his patient, quiet Rebecca, in a sacred veil of tender reverence. Secondly, he is a sort of High Priest of Flora; and though not precisely such an one as would have been chosen to tend the shrine of her Roman Temple, yet this will give him a poetic claim upon my interest, so long as the absorbing love of beauty renders a Flower-Merchant more attractive to my fancy than a dealer in grain.

Were I not afraid of wearying your patience with descriptions of scenery, I would talk of the steamboat passage from Ravenswood; for indeed it is very beautiful. But I forbear all allusion to the gliding boats, the vernal forests, falling in love with their own shadows in the river, and the cozy cottages, peeping out from the foliage with their pleasant, friendly faces. I have placed the lovely landscape in the halls of memory, where I can look upon it whenever my soul needs the bounteous refreshings of nature. I congratulate myself for having added this picture to my gallery, as a blessing for the weary months that are coming upon us; for Summer has waved her last farewell, as she passed away over the summit of the sunlit hills, and I can already spy the waving white locks of old Winter, as he comes hobbling up, before the gale, on the other side. I could forgive him the ague-fit he bestows on poor Summer, as she hurries by; but the plague of it is, he will stand gossiping with Spring's green fairy, till every tooth chatters in her sweet little head.

Now, of a truth, my friend, I have been meaning to write sober sense; but what is written, is written. As the boy said of his whistling, 'it did itself.' I would gladly have shown more practical good sense, and talked wisely on the spirit of the age,' 'progress of the species,' and the like; but I believe, in my soul, fairies keep carnival all the year round in my poor brain; for even when I first wake, I find a

magic ring of tinted mushrooms, to show where their midnight dance has been. But I did not bore you with scenery, and you should give me credit for that; we who live cooped up in cities, are so apt to forget that any body but ourselves ever sees blue sky enough for a suit of bed curtains, or butter-cups and greensward sufficient for a flowered coverlet. 'Don't crow till you're out of the wood,' though; for the aforesaid picture hangs in the hall, and I may yet draw aside the curtain and give you a peep, if you are very curious. Real pictures, like every thing else real, cannot be bought with cash. Old Mammon buys nothing but shadows. My gallery beats that of the Duke of Devonshire; for it is filled with originals by the oldest masters, and not a copy among them all; and, better still, the sheriff cannot seize them, let him do his worst; others may prove property in the same, but they lie safely beyond the reach of trover or replevin.

As we passed Blackwell's Island, I looked with thoughtful sadness on the handsome stone edifice erected there for a Lunatic Asylum. On another part of the island is a Penitentiary; likewise a noble building, though chilling the heart with its barred doors and grated windows. The morally and the intellectually insane-should they not both be treated with great tenderness? It is a question for serious thought; and phrenology, with all its absurd quackery on its back, will yet aid mankind in giving the fitting answer. There has at least been kindness evinced in the location chosen; for if free breezes, beautiful expanse of water, quiet, rural scenery, and the blue sky that bends o'er all,' can minister to the mind diseased,' then surely these forlorn outcasts of society may here find God's best physicians for their shattered nerves.

Another object which interested me exceedingly was the Long-Island Farm School, for foundling, and orphans. Six or eight hundred children are here

carefully tended by a matron and her assistants, until they are old enough to go out to service or trades. Their extensive play-ground runs along the shore; a place of as sweet natural influences as could well be desired. I thought of the squalid little wretches I had seen at Five Points, whose greatest misfortune was that they were not orphans. I thought of the crowd of sickly infants in Boston alms-house-the innocent victims of hereditary vice. And my heart ached, that it could see no end to all this misery, though it heard it, in the far-off voice of prophesy.

LETTER X.

October 21, 1841.

In a great metropolis like this, nothing is more observable than the infinite varieties of character. Almost without effort, one may happen to find himself, in the course of a few days, beside the Catholic kneeling before the Cross, the Mohammedan bowing to the East, the Jew veiled before the ark of the testimony, the Baptist walking into the water, the Quaker keeping his head covered in the presence of dignitaries and solemnities of all sorts, and the Mormon quoting from the Golden Book which he has

never seen.

More, perhaps, than any other city, except Paris or New Orleans, this is a place of rapid fluctuation, and never-ceasing change. A large portion of the population are like mute actors, who tramp across the stage in pantomime or pageant, and are seen no more. The enterprising, the curious, the reckless, and the criminal, flock hither from all quarters of the world, as to a common centre, whence they can diverge at pleasure. Where men are little known, they are imperfectly restrained; therefore, great numbers here live with somewhat of that wild