THE QUIET COUNTRY MAN.

79

'Small blame to him; for it is enough to set even the sedatest countryman crazy to enter the great thoroughfares of a city that is full of stirs, a tumultuous city.' How sober soever his mind, the prevailing excitement will seize him, and he will mingle with the conflicting currents like a straw revolving in the hurrying eddies of a running stream. In the evening, especially, when

-'all the spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of light,

The roaring of the wheels,'

the town, to one unused to its busy scenes, is absolutely overwhelming.

'Can you show me Main-street?' said an ingenious, fresh-looking young man to us, the other morning, near Hudson-Square, as we were walking down to the publication-office. 'Main-street? we asked; 'New-York has no Main-street: you are thinking of Broadway, perhaps?' 'Oh, yes; Broadway-that 's it. I did n't know; I never ben in a city afore.' We accompanied him to and down Broadway, and enjoyed his enjoyment at all the strange sights he saw. We almost envied him the romantic newness of his sensations. He was positively eloquent, in his simple way, as he depicted his emotions on nearing the metropolis in the morning steamer. As he approached

this London of America' the cloud of coal-reek which

80

A DREADFUL ACCIDENT.'

overhung the giant city, indicating its vicinity long before he reached the northern verge; the many sails which were tending toward it, in the expanding river and opening harbor; and at last, the broad bay, with tall ships setting in from the sea; the steamers and water-craft of every description hurrying to and fro from either shore; and the Great Metropolis itself stretching into the distance, with its domes and spires, its towers, cupolas and 'steepled chimnies,' rising through a canopy of smoke, in the gray dawn of a cloudless September morning; these, bursting upon his sensitive vision at once, had filled his mind, and almost made him a painter through the medium of words. He renewed within us our love of, and pride in, this our pleasant dwelling-place, the great metropolis of our native state. What a city shall we be by and by!

A CONFIRMED Wag it was who startled every body on the deck of the 'JOHN MASON' steamer the other day, on her way from Albany to Troy, with the inquiry, in a loud nasal tone: Hear of that dreadful accident to-day aboard the Greenbush hoss-boat?' 'No' exclaimed half-a-dozen Wal, they

by-standers at once; 'no' what was it?" :

was tellin' of it down to the dee-pot; and nigh as I can cal'late, the hoss-boat had got within abeöut two rod of the wharf, when the larboard-hoss bu'st a flue; carryin'

A DREADFUL ACCIDENT.'

81

away her stern, unshippin' her rudder, and scaldin' more 'n a dozen passengers! I do n't know as there is any truth into it; praps 't aint so; but any way, that's the story. The narrator was less successful, according to his own account, with a rather practical joke which he undertook to play upon a Yankee townsman of his, a week or two before, in New York. 'He never liked me much, 'xpect,' said he, nor I did n't him, nuther. And I was a-walkin' along Pearl-street in 'York, sellin' some o' these little notions 'at you see here, (a 'buck-wheat fanning-mill,' a 'rotary-sieve' to sift apple-saäce,' etc.,) when I see him a-buyin' some counter goods in a store. So I went in and hail'd him 'Says I, right off, jest as if I'd seen him adoin' the same thing a dozen times 'afore that mornin', says I, 'Won't they trust you here, nuther?' Thunder! you never see a man so riled. He looked right straight at me, and was 'een-amost white, he was so mad. The clerks laäfed, they did - but he did n't, I guess. see you a minute!' says he, pooty solemn, and comin' toward the door. I went; and just as soon as I got on to the gridiron-steps he kicked me! I did n't care - not much then; but if his geese do n't have the Shatick cholera when I get home, you can take my hat,' as they say in York. I was doin' the merchant he was tryin' to buy calicoes on a good turn, any how; for I 'xpect he was goin' to get 'em on trust, and I know'd he was an all

'I want to

82 A LOCOMOTIVE ON A WINTRY NIGHT.

mighty shirk. I ruther guess he did n't get 'em, but I

do n't know not sartain.'

WHAT supernatural shriek is that, sounding through the murky air of this stormy February night? Twelve o'clock, too,' by 'r Lady:' but be not alarmed. It is only the steam-whistle of the iron horse on the Hudson River rail-road, rushing into the Great Metropolis, at a 'two-forty' pace, bringing with him hundreds of passengers, some of whom, having never been to town before, are bewildered with its increasing vastness; the thickening lamps; the branching, crossing, lengthening, interminable streets; the 'leagues of light, the roaring of the wheels.' That same snorting steam-horse, scarce an hour ago, as he swept with his train through the very walls of the state's-prison at Sing-Sing, rumbled in the ears of the half-wakened captives, illustrating by his own wild freedom the liberty denied to them, and spoke of pleasant villages passed, and familiar scenes toward which he was rushing; he startled the echoes of Sleepy-Hollow, and the demons fled affrighted, for a greater than the steed erewhile bestrode by the Headless Horseman' was now spouting the hot white breath from his iron nostrils; onward he came; past golden 'Sunnyside,' disturbing not, let us hope, the inmates of that nest of genius and refinement; on to 'Dовв, his

THE YANKEE IN POWERS'S STUDIO. 83

Ferry,' and over the very soil of the pleasant places where 'Old' and 'Young KNICK,' and his little sisters so often walked and frolicked with the 'gooëd vrouw,' along the shores of the beautiful Tappaän-Zee. But what is all this about?' asks the reader. Nothing in the world but the shrill whistle of a locomotive, hollow-sounding on the dull ear of Night, just as we are going to bed.

It is the custom, as we learn from a friend, in all parts of Scotland to send invitations, when a death occurs in a family, to all the neighbors to attend the funeral. On one occasion, a neighbor was omitted by the bereaved family, in the usual invitations, a feud having arisen between them. On the day of the funeral, while the people were assembling, the slighted 'auld wife' stood in her door, and watched the gathering. At length, unable to bear up under her resentment any longer, she exclaimed, 'Aweel! aweel! we'll ha'e a corpse o' our ain in our ain house some day! see then who 'll be invited!' What an exhibition of human nature!

By-the-by, it may not be amiss to remark in passing, that it was the identical Greek Slave' concerning which the ensuing colloquy took place between the sculptor him