home from you; I have found a dearer home on the breast of the glorious ocean; cordial friends and honest men share with me my oaken dwelling; and, Sir, none here dare strike me; no one would strike me; they all love me too dearly.'

Is this your choice, degenerate boy!-a life of hardship and peril shared with such associates; is this the life which you choose, in preference to one of luxury and ease, where you would have nothing to do but to study?'

'Father, a life of honor with these rough men, a life of peril and hardship, in preference to a life of luxury, where in a fit of hasty anger I may be struck to the earth, like some refractory slave; any life, Sir, but that!'

'Boy! do you know my power and my rightful authority? Do you know that I could drag you home tied like a felon, and lock you there?'

'Sir, do so! Bind me and bar me; but remember, no locks, bonds or bars can bind my spirit. It is free; free as the glad albatross that skims far and wide over the ocean, and sleeps when it listeth on the bosom of the wave that feeds it. Exercise your 'rightful authority,' Sir, if you choose; but bind me strong and bar me well. I love the ocean! The sea is my home; and beware, Sir, lest I seek it again, in spite of bolts and bars. Love like mine defies both.'

'Boy! it is well! You have chosen! Never enter my house again. From this moment I disinherit you for ever! Not one farthing of mine shall ever cross your palm! Now, Sir, enjoy your 'prospects'-enjoy your 'associations!''

It is well, my father-father no longer! I have anticipated your kind disinheritance. Since you disgraced me with a blow, I have not borne your name. My energies, my hopes, my ambition, and all of the man which God has given me, will carry me alone through the world. Resurgam' is my motto-independence my character! Farewell, Sir; you might have made me all you could have wished-now I will make myself!'

The father turned sternly away and strode up the wharf. The son turned tearfully around toward the captain, who met him with open arms:

Ned, cheer up, my boy!' said he; 'I'll be your father now. Cheer up! We sail to-morrow, with a load of flour for Rio de Janerio. If you want any thing, run down to my locker and get some money, and go ashore and buy it; there's the key. Come, boy! do n't be down-hearted. Grief is like an anchor in the hold, where it can't be got at; it only weighs down the ship, without being of any use!'

Ned brightened up; he felt that he was not friendless, but he did so long to see his sister and mother! Alas! that sister cared not for him, though he loved her so dearly. Her aim was to supplant him in parental affection. Her hatred was, oh God! how unnatural! But it was!

But a truce to sadness, and ho! for the merry sea!

A MISFORTUNE Similar to the one so touchingly described by that sublime poetess, Mother Goose, has befallen the Arch-Humbug in the case of that portion of his flock wearing the Sack Degenerate. They have left all their tails behind 'em!'

What then is the Sack Degenerate?

As its name implies, it is emphatically a 'runty' scion of the parent Sack Proper. It resembles the latter in some respects, but it fits closer to the figure, and is considerably shorter. If the inside. coat of a man show itself below his sack, or if wearing no inside coat his sack is barely sufficient for the preservation of decency, then may you safely pronounce it one of the Degenerate.' This variety bears about the same relation to the former in size and appearance as does broccoli to the cauliflower.

The Sack Degenerate usually makes its appearance upon a man a year after the Sack Proper. This fact I scarcely know how to account for. I have sometimes fancied that men wear the large sack one year, and economize the next in the scant one; but for my part I would rather stint myself in fire, or food, than in cloth; I would prefer depriving myself of a little amusement, or of a party or two, to making my appearance in the street in the semblance of an overgrown school-boy. Again, it has occurred to me that nature has operated in this case as in every other, to restore the equilibrium of things: if she gives us a remarkably fine crop one summer, we often see the harvest fall short in the next. Thirdly, I have occasionally imagined that the sack may in its nature resemble certain plants, which will flourish very well, and grow luxuriantly for one season, but after that become weak and puny; or many imported seeds, which for one year produce fine plants which perhaps arrive at maturity, but the seeds gathered from them will grow up into poor, spindly, insignificant caricatures of vegetable life.

The Sack Proper may be likened to a Doctor Johnson, the Sack

Degenerate to his Boswell. A sound turnip, and one that has been frozen and thawed, may represent the two garments. If the Sack Degenerate be not a stunted variety of the genus Sack, it is a base, contemptible imitation of the pea-jacket of the seamen.

These gentlemen in short sacks invariably bring to my remembrance Rabelais's 'ten thousand panniers full of bob-tailed devils.' I am inclined to suspect them of being disciples of Lord Monboddo, who, supposing with him, that in the lapse of time, and amid the various mutations of the whole human race, the primitive tail of the genus homo has been gradually worn away and eradicated, (till at length it has totally disappeared and left not a trace behind,) wish in like manner to get rid of the artificial tail of the outward man. Strange that any human being should be visited with an inclination to resemble a bull-terrier!

This propensity to dock, which appears to be inherent in our nature, and confined to us alone, we have seen exercised in the horse, the sheep, and other domestic animals; but no one could ever have dreampt that man himself would under any circumstances become the victim of the passion. All the indignities we inflict upon the brute creation man has hitherto been privileged from. Now that we and our clothes are threatened with, yea! made subject to, one, and not the least, of these injuries, it hath become the duty of every good man to resist this innovation, Ye blind leaders of the blind, ye know not what ye do! It is not the mere cutting off of three, or six, or eight inches of cloth, that I exclaim against; that should not move my steadfast soul. But what I fear, is this; that if this fashion extend itself among all classes, we shall become a nation of conceited men!

Tailors-where are ye? Why do ye not raise your voices, and protest against this saving of cloth, this libel upon the taste of the age? Let us return if you will to the doublet and the cloak; but away with this mockery of a tail, this termination which ends where it ought not! Let us be tail-less animals, or animals with decent tails! Let us approximate to the untrimmed game-cock, not to the conceited and curly-tailed drake!

I am convinced that a short tail is an indication of conceit in man or any other animal. A docked horse, I am positive, is a much more conceited beast than a long-tailed one. The ape with merely an abbreviated attempt at a tail, or the pig with a concise and spiral one, is a much more distinguished animal, in his own opinion, than is the lordly tiger or princely lion, possessing (to speak scientifically,) a much more considerably produced caudal extremity. By the way, it is a curious coincidence, that M. Granville, the illustrator of La Fontaine's fables, has almost invariably depicted the docked, short-tailed, or tail-less animals in a garment which is an exact representation of the Sack Degenerate, while he has given to the long-tailed beasts a coat corresponding, or a wide and flowing mantle. Did he perceive the analogy?

Look at the wren. He is unquestionably the most pert and conceited of all birds. And why? He cannot help being so; the dis

position arises from his short tail; it is his destiny, indicated by his tail; written on it by nature, in characters not to be misinterpreted. Any one who never saw the bird before, could read his character without the necessity of referring to Wilson, or Audubon, or anybody else.

The tail of any animal is in my opinion intimately connected with, and a sort of expositor, (infallible, if we can but hit upon the correct principles of judging therefrom,) of his moral and intellectual faculties. Why, if it be not so, do scientific men always describe the size of a beast or bird, by giving the length from the tip of the nose, the very centre of the parts in which the mental faculties are supposed to reside, the middle of the visage, the organ on which depends much of its expression, to what?-to the end of the tail-the end, mark!-comprehending that member from its very beginning, from its first rudiment, to that undefinable point where it fades away into nought—the whole tail, showing that they attach infinite importance to that perquisite, as it may be called, of beasts. How did the ass of old, or as others have it, the Devil, evince his surpassing conceit and absurdity? By painting his tail sky-blue. Neat but not gaudy!' as he pithily expressed his opinion of the effect of the decoration. Why did he exercise his taste in coloring upon his tail, rather than his ears, or his hoofs, or any other part of him? Why did Shakspeare speak of a 'rat without a tail,' but as meaning a monster destitute of the very essence and insignia of his race? What would become of a fish without his tail? Would he not be at the mercy of every current, little better than a ship without a rudder? Would a Canadian carman swear so much, so fast, and so long in bad French, were the tail of his cart prohibited? No, no! A thousand times, no! Doth not much depend on the tail of the kite; is it not in truth the most important member there of? Who would take any notice of, or trouble his head about, a comet without a tail? Sages might sit up to watch the peregrinations of such a wandering light; they might be all agog to account for the phenomenon. But what would we common people think about it? A comet without a tail! Disgraceful! Immodest! Don't speak of it!

It is true, that astronomers say, that when a comet approaches very close to the sun, the tail is no longer discernible. This fact they explain by very learned reasons, overlooking altogether, (as sages will,) the simple solution of the problem, which I take upon myself the merit of having originated, the supposition that it is burnt off by the excessive heat that we may imagine to exist there. What more natural and reasonable than this presumption? And yet I doubt not that jealous rival philosophers will ridicule the idea. The tail appears gradually again, I confess, as the comet recedes from the source of light and heat; but we can readily conceive that it grows out again, just like our nails or hair under the like circumstances. The Romans were undoubtedly of this opinion, as I judge from their calling the tail of a comet, 'comæ,' the hair; the comet itself, 'stella crinita,' long-haired star. Now, adopting this solution as the true one, and applying the same system of reasoning to Sacks