The Hessian was decently buried, but I could not find out what became of the little girl. Nobody seemed to remember. I trust that, in after years, she was happily married; that no Jersey Lovelace attempted to trifle with a heart whose impulses were so prompt, and whose purposes were so sincere. They did not seem to know if she had married or not. Yet it does not seem probable that such simplicity of conception, frankness of expression, and deftness of execution, were lost to posterity, or that they failed, in their time and season, to give flavor to the domestic felicity of the period. Beyond this, the story perhaps has little. value, except as an offset to the usual anecdotes of Hessian atrocity. They had their financial panics even in Jersey, in the old days. She remembered when Dr. White married your cousin Mary—or was it Susan?-yes, it was Susan. She remembers that your Uncle Harry brought in an armful of bank-notes-paper money, you know—and threw them in the corner, saying they were no good to anybody. She remembered playing with them, and giving them to your Aunt Anna-no, child, it was your own mother, bless your heart! Some of them was marked as high as a hundred dollars. Everybody kept gold and silver in a stocking, or in a "chaney" vase, like that. You never used money to buy anything. When Josiah went to Springfield to buy anything, he took a cartload of things with him to exchange. That yaller picture-frame was paid for in greenings. But then people knew jest what they had. They didn't fritter their substance away in unchristian trifles, like your father, Eliza Jane, who doesn't know that there is a God who will smite him hip and thigh; for ven geance is mine, and those that believe in me. But here, singalarly enough, the inferior maxillaries gave out, and her jaw dropped. (I noticed that her giddy daughter of eighty-five was sitting near her, but I do not pretend to connect this fact with the arrested flow of personal disclosure.) Howbeit, when she recovered her speech again, it appeared that she was complaining of the weather. sea. The seasons had changed very much since your father went to The winters used to be terrible in those days. When she went over to Springfield, in June, she saw the snow still on Watson's Ridge. There were whole days when you couldn't get over to William Henry's, their next neighbor, a quarter of a mile away. It was that drefful winter that the Spanish sailor was found. You don't remember the Spanish sailor, Eliza Jane-it was before your time. There was a little personal skirmishing here, which I feared, at first, might end in a suspension of maxillary functions, and the loss of the story: but here it is. Ah, me! it is a pure white winter idyl: how shall I sing it this bright, gay autumnal day? It was a terrible night, that winter's night, when she and the century were young together. The sun was lost at three o'clock: the snowy night came down like a white sheet, that flapped around the house, beat at the windows with its edges, and at last wrapped it in a close embrace. In the middle of the night, they thought they heard above the wind a voice crying, "Christus, Christus!" in a foreign tongue. They opened the door-no easy task in the north wind that pressed its strong shoulders against itbut nothing was to be seen but the drifting snow. The next morning dawned on fences hidden, and a landscape changed and obliterated with drift. During the day, they again heard the cry of "Christus!" this time faint and hidden, like a child's voice. They searched in vain: the drifted snow hid its secret. On the third day they broke a path to the fence, and then they heard the cry distinctly. Digging down, they found the body of a man -a Spanish sailor, dark and bearded, with ear-rings in his ears. As they stood gazing down at his cold and pulseless figure, the cry of "Christus!" again rose upon the wintry air; and they turned and fled in superstitious terror to the house. And then one of the children, bolder than the rest, knelt down, and opened the dead man's rough pea-jacket, and found-what think you!a little blue-and-green parrot, nestling against his breast. It was the bird that had echoed mechanically the last despairing cry of the life that was given to save it. It was the bird, that ever after, amid outlandish oaths and wilder sailor-songs, that I fear often shocked the pure ears of its gentle mistress, and brought scandal into the Jerseys, still retained that one weird and mournful cry. The sun meanwhile was sinking behind the steadfast range beyond, and I could not help feeling that I must depart with my wants unsatisfied. I had brought away no historic fragment: I absolutely knew little or nothing new regarding George Washington. I had been addressed variously by the names of different members of the family who were dead and forgotten; I had stood for an hour in the past: yet I had not added to my historical knowledge, nor the practical benefit of your readers. I spoke once more of Washington, and she replied with a reminiscence of Perkins. Stand forth, O Josiah W. Perkins, of Basking Ridge, N. J.! Thou wast of little account in thy life, I warrant; thou didst not even feel the greatness of thy day and time; thou didst criticise thy superiors; thou wast small and narrow in thy ways; thy very name and grave are unknown and uncared for: but thou wast once kind to a woman who survived thee, and, lo! thy name is again spoken of men, and for a moment lifted up above thy betters. PHOENIX AT SEA. BY JOHN PHOENIX. BRIGHT and beautiful rose the sun, from out the calm blue sea, its early rays gleaming on the snow-white decks of the Northerner, and "gilding refined gold" as they penetrated the stateroom "A," and lingering, played among the tresses of the slumbering McAuburn. It was a lovely morning; "the winds were all hushed, and the waters at rest," and no sound was heard but the throbbing of the engine and the splash of the paddle-wheels as the gallant old Northerner sped on her way, "tracking the trackless sea." Two sailors, engaged in their morning devotions with the holy-stones near my room, amused me not a little. One of them, either accidentally or with "malice prepense," threw a bucket of water against the bulwark, which, ricocheting, struck the other on his dorsal extremity, as he leaned to his work, making that portion of his frame exceedingly damp and him exceedingly angry. "You just try that again, your soul," exclaimed the offended one," and I'll slap your chops for you." "Oh, yes, you will," sarcastically rejoined he of the water bucket. I've heerd of you afore! You're old chop-slapper's son, aint you? Father went round slapping people's chops, didn't he?" Then followed a short fight, in which, as might have been expected, "Old chop-slapper's son" got rather the worst of it. There was no excuse for being sick that morning, so our passengers, still pale, but with cheerful hope depicted in their countenances, soon began to throng the deck; segars were again brought into requisition, and we had an opportunity of ascertaining "whether there was any Bourbon among us." A capital set of fellows they were. There was Moore, and Parker, and Bowers (one of Joe Bowers's boys), and Sarsaparilla Meade, and Freeman, which last mentioned gentlemen, so amusing were they, appeared to be travelling expressly to entertain us. And there were no ladies, which to me was a blessed dispensation. "Oh, woman! in our hours of ease Certainly but at sea, Woman, you are decidedly disagreeable. In the first place, you generally bring babies with you, which are a crying evil, and then you have to have the best stateroom and the finest seat at the table, and monopolize the captain's attention and his room, and you make remarks to one another about us, and our segars and profanity, and accuse us of singing rowdy songs nights; and you generally wind up by doing some scandalous thing yourself, when half of us take your part and the other half don't, and we get all together by the ears, and a pretty state of affairs ensues. No, woman! you are agreeable enough on shore, if taken homeopathically, but on a steamer, you are a decided nuisance. We had a glorious day aboard the old Northerner; we played whist, and sang songs, and told stories, many of which were coeval with our ancient school-lessons, and, like them, came very easy, going over the second time, and many drank strong waters, and becoming mopsed thereon, toasted "the girls we'd left behind us," whereat one, who, being a temperance man, had guzzled soda-water until his eyes seemed about to pop from his head, pondered deeply, sighed, and said nothing. And so we laughed and sang and played and whiskied and soda-watered through the day. And fast the old Northerner rolled on. And at night the Captain gave us a grand game supper in his room, at which game we played not, but went at it in sober earnest; and then there were more songs (the same ones, though, and the same stories too, over again), and some speechifying, and much fun, until at eight bells we separated, some shouting, some laughing, some crying (but not with sorrow), but all extremely happy, and So we turned in. But before I sought stateroom A that night, I executed a small scheme, for insuring undisturbed repose, which I had revolved in my mind during the day, and which met with the most brilliant success, as you shall hear. You remember the two snobs that every night, in the pursuit of exercise under difficulties, walk up and down on the deck, arm in arm, right over your stateroom. You remember how, when just as you are getting into your first doze, they commence, tramp! tramp! tramp! right over your head; then you "hear them fainter, fainter still;" you listen in horrible dread of their return, nourishing the while a feeble-minded hope that they may have gone below-when, horror! here they come, louder, louder, |