'OLD MURPHY' OF THE MOHAWK. 89

disconsolate visage,) but then, 'Squire, how would it be kept? This anecdote by a clever correspondent reminds us of another, which we shall venture to relate in this connection, though it must needs suffer by the juxtaposition. Mr. G——, who had by degrees become so attached to his cups that he could not comfortably go by eleven o'clock without his nip' of brandy, and who was yet anxious to avoid the suspicion of being an habitual drinker, was in the habit daily of inventing some excuse to the bar-keeper and those within hearing. He had used up all the stereotyped reasons, such as a slight pain,' a 'a kind of sinking,' not feeling right,' etc., etc. One Saturday, at the usual hour, he called for his brandy-and-water, saying, 'I am extremely dry; I am going to have salt fish for dinner!" 'No excuse was better than none,' he probably thought.

6

ONE of the earliest settlers of old Schoharie was a man named MURPHY, more familiarly known as 'Old MURPHY.' He was a terror to the Indians and their sworn enemy, for he had suffered much from their robberies, and wanton destruction of his crops and cattle. But his most deadly hate arose from the murder of his two brothers; for which act he solemly swore to devote his life to their extermination. 'Old MURPHY' was a wily enemy, as the Indians had well ascertained; and they sought his life by all

90

OLD MURPHY' OF THE MOHAWK.

6

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Fearing that she had met

possible artifice and strategy. On one occasion their wiles came near being successful. MURPHY had a cow, which wandered from his cabin during the day to browse in the woods, with a bell suspended from her neck to indicate her whereabout; returning always at night to be milked, and with udders all drawn dry' to stand and 'inly ruminate' by the hut until morning called her to sally forth again. One evening she failed to return; another day passed, and with it the hour when the kye came hame' usually, but she came not. with foul play, MURPHY started, with his rifle on his shoulder, to look her up,' following the direction she was taking when she left the hut. After several hours of fruitless pursuit, the faint sound of her familiar bell in the distance gladdened his ear. It's all right!' said he, in his delight at finding her; and he rapidly neared the spot whence the sound proceeded, a thicket of close undergrowth, in the heart of the forest. All at once he stopped short. That is 'Old Spot's bell,' said he, but it's not on her neck; she do n't swing her bell in that way when she browses. There's mischief here! Cautiously approaching the spot whence the slow and regular 'ting-a-ling' proceeded, he saw at some sixty yards distant two Indians seated upon an old mossy log, peering intently now and then into the recesses of the wood, and at intervals of three or four minutes slowly swinging the cow-bell, which

THE FEMALE SMUGGLER.

91

they thought would bring 'Old MURPHY' into their toils, 'as a bird hasteth to the snare.' But it was his hour of joy, not theirs. He watched the movements of the red rascals as a cat watches a mouse when safe in her claws. Secure from observation behind a large tree, he selected the 'bell-wether,' and with deliberate aim sent a bullet through his heart. The Indian uttered one shriek, sprang three feet or more upward, and dropped dead beside the log upon which he had been sitting. His comrade looked round in amazement to gather the direction of the shot, and then shouldered the dead body of his comrade, and was moving off, when a second shot from the musket

which MURPHY had by this time

loaded, laid him and his There were two withered

dead companion lifeless together. scalps hanging on each smoky jamb of Old MURPHY'S fire-place for more than twenty years: and he always regarded them with a 'grim smile' when he was rehearsing the history of their acquisition.

'Poetry Run Mad' is inadmissible, on two accounts. In the first place, it strikes us we have met parts of it at least before; and in the second, the style has 'outlived our liking. Nobody but HooD manages well this ragged species of verse; a very clever specimen of which is contained in his Custom-House Breeze,' the story of a lady

เ

92

THE FEMALE SMUGGLER.

smuggler who would not go ashore at Dover, because there was a searching wind' blowing, which might expose the lace-swathings of her person:

'In spite of rope and barrow, knot, and tuck,

Of plank and ladder, there she stuck!
She could n't, no, she would n't go on shore.

'But, Ma'am,' the steward interfered,

"The wessel must be cleared.

Yon mus' n't stay aboard, Ma'am, no one do n't!
It's quite ag'in the orders so to do,

And all the passengers has gone but you.'
Says she, 'I cannot go ashore and won't!'
'You ought to!'

'But I can't!'

'You must!'

'I sha' n't!' 9

NUMBER FOUR.

THE QUACK-DOCTOR: NAPOLEON AND HIS BATTLES:

MAL-ADROIT COMPLI

MENT THE LIVING-DEAD: PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES: A TEMPERANCE STORY: COMFORT OF COMMON THINGS: A HOG IN ARMOR : POETRY OF THE ALPHABET: AUTHENTIC ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON: PERILS OF A JACKASS: A MAN'S OWN HOME: INSIGNIA OF HENPECKERY' -THE HELPLESS 'HELP-MATE': SONNETEERING, WITH A

SPECIMEN REMINISCENCES: DEATH OF A GOOD MAN.

STUMBLED on a character the other evening,' writes

a

a friend, on board a steam-boat, which presented some traits that I thought rather original and unique. I daguerreotyped him on the spot. I had just finished supper, and was quietly enjoying my cigar on the deck, when I heard an individual declaiming in a loud tone of voice to some two or three attentive listeners, (but evidently intended for the benefit of whomsoever it might concern,) on pathology. Being as it were thus invited, I also became a listener to something like the following: There it is now! Well, some people talk about seated fevers. I don't know any thing about seated fevers; there aint no such thing as seated fever. A musquitoe-bite is a fever; cure the bite, and the fever leaves you. So with a bile -just the same thing; their aint no such thing, I tell you, as seated fever.