nately she sustained no injury, which led to a suspicion that the instrument of death had been loaded with an eye to safety. Upon this the gallant bridegroom experienced a revivification of valor. He stepped forward, informed the unfortunate Phelps that he should hear from him in the morning through the medium of Mr. Hays, and peremptorily ordered him to leave the room. The poor bride, who during this scene had been rather in the back ground, thought she now perceived a favorable opportunity for display, and accordingly, as the most natural expedient, commenced a fainting fit; but there being no one sufficiently on the alert to catch her in his arms, and having, in the hurry of the moment, neglected the precaution of seeing that there was a chair in her immediate vicinity, she was obliged, when just upon the brink of insensibility, not only to recede considerably, but also to look around her and diverge from a straight line in order to attain that necessary piece of furniture. This gave such an air of insincerity to the whole proceeding, that even her warmest admirers were compelled to admit that the attempt was a failure. Mr. Jackson once more asked Mr. Phelps whether he intended to quit the room, or whether he was waiting for him (Jackson) to put him out. Phelps scorned to reply; a peculiar expression flitted over

his pale features, he cast an indescribable look towards the bride, and then did as he was desired.

On the following day, about noon, a gallant Liverpool packet was passing Sandy Hook, outward bound. On her deck stood the principal actor in the intended tragedy of the preceding evening. His disappointment in love, and some fraudulent transactions connected with his late failure, had induced him to seek relief in change of scene. The breeze was fair, and the vessel was careering "o'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea" at the

rate of about nine knots an hour.

Phelps stood at

the stern of the ship gazing intently on the land of his forefathers, which was fast fading in the distance. A slight blue line at the verge of the horizon was all that remained to him of the home of his childhood-the scene of so many balls, and publics, and parties-where he had danced, and sung, and played billiards, and eaten oysters when a mere boy; the tears started to his eyes, he leaned his head over the ship's side, and in a voice choked with agony, exclaimed

"Oh, captain, I am very sick!"

The captain, in that cheerful tone of voice with which a man who has nothing the matter with him consoles another who has, replied, "Never mind, sir-you'll be better in a day or two-haul taut the fore-top-sail halliards there! belay!"

This to Phelps, whose face exhibited as many shades of blue, and black, and green, and yellow, as the back of a dying dolphin, was a great consolation. Indeed I have myself often had occasion to observe the happy effects of similar scraps of comfort applied to sea-sick passengers. It is so pleasant when you are suffering under this horrible affliction-when every minute seems an age, and every hour an eternity-to be told, "never mind, sir, you'll get over it in less than a week, maybe!"

Time rolled on, and nothing reached the American shores concerning the fate of Thomas Augustus Phelps, except a flying report that he had been undergoing a course of exercises in the Brixton tread-mill, when one Sunday morning, in the autumn of the year 1829, a shabby-genteel personage was seen strutting up Broadway. It was Phelpsyet why was he here? His first love blessed another; and the children that ought to have been called Phelps, were christened Jackson. The wooden paling of Trinity church-yard was at that period prostrate, and the cast-iron railing had not been erected, so that there was no obstacle to a free ingress to and egress from the burying-ground. Phelps wandered in among the tombs—a presentiment of some overhanging evil weighed heavily upon his breast, and before he had proceeded far

he came to a plain marble slab almost overgrown with grass. A strange curiosity seized him; he knelt down and parted the rank weeds which overshadowed it; a sunbeam at that moment darted precisely on the place, and he saw, carved in legible German-text, the simple inscription "Julia." He was indescribably affected; and yet he felt a melancholy pleasure in thinking that she had too late become sensible of his merits, and pined into the grave in consequence of his absence. While indulging in this train of reflection, a troop of little boys, attracted by the extraordinary spectacle of a man upon his kness in a church-yard, began to gather round, shouting and pelting him with earth and small pebbles. He arose to reprimand them; but there having been a heavy shower of rain, and he having white duck trowsers on, the effect of his kneeling, upon his clothes, can, like a young heroine's feelings, be more easily imagined than described. He instantly, therefore, became an object of universal observation, and the little boys shouted and pelted more than ever. Phelps was exasperated beyond measure; he seized one of the young miscreants, shook him well, and threatened the most dreadful corporeal chastisement if he did not desist.

"Hurrah for Jackson!"* exclaimed the young

rebel, nothing daunted.

"Hurrah for Jackson!" chimed in his companions in evil-doing. This pointed, though unintentional allusion to his rival, at once unnerved Phelps-recollections of former insults and injuries came over him, and he strode from the burialground, the boys hurraing all the while at his coat. tail; when lo! who should be seen issuing from the church porch but Mr. Raphael Jackson himself with his own Julia, now Mrs. Jackson, hanging on his arm! This was too much-so then it appeared she had not pined away in his absence-she had not died-and he had been kneeling by the side of some one else's Julia! They passed him without speaking, he muttered dreadful imprecations to himself, and bent his way down Wall-street.

He is now only the wreck of his former self, though he is more corpulent than he was wont to be, yet it is not a healthy corpulency; and his apparel is the extreme of what is generally denominated "seedy." Yet amid this moral and physical desolation some traces of identity are yet preserved -some glimmerings of what once was Phelps!

* A common political cry about this time with young republi