large, his visage long, his nose thin, high and hooked (sometimes called Roman and sometimes parrot-billed). His eyes were dark hazel, the iris small, the balls very large and prominent, and the white of the eye disproportionably great; the upper lids covered the iris so as to give the idea of a West India turtle. His mouth was wide, and garnished with strong teeth, and his chin with the parts adjacent, assumed the appearance vulgarly called wapper-jaw'd. His beard in its incipient and downy state, promised to be what Shakspeare calls "cane-coloured." A shock of coarse unyielding hair capp'd this unpromising physiognomy with deviously diverging locks, in colours rather too red to be called carotty. With all this picturesque diversity-this variety of curve and line and angle, in feature and in figure, there was an archness, an audacity, and an expression of good nature in Zeb, that gained him a firmer footing in the good will of those he happened to be thrown among, than many a smoother form and face could boast. His was an attractive figure. It did not pass unnoticed in a crowd. The eye once fixed on such a face was not rapidly withdrawn; and when Zeb, in after times found the looks of beauty rivetted on his form and features, he enjoyed in return the privilege of gazing on sparkling eyes fixed unconsciously on his odd physiognomy-vermeil lips half opened by surprise-and the happy consciousness of being an object of admiration, for such he certainly was. A female feels ashamed to gaze at a pretty fellow; but no one thought any harm to look at Zeb Spiff.

it

The aversion our hero felt to leaving home and his beloved brothers and sisters, and schoolfellows, all endeared by scenes of joy and, in years long past, by scenes of strife, was now exchanged for a desire to see the world. Curiosity and ambition triumphed so far over his tender feelings, that he became impatient for the time of departure to arrive. The evening previous to that important day which consigned our Zebediah Spiffard to the stage driver and the world, his father took him apart, and bestowed on him a roll of hard dollars, and a lecture, longer and quite as heavy, upon his future conduct in life, Zeb afterwards said that it was considerable lengthy; but we know that it was cut short by a loud snore unconsciously sounded from the open mouth and nostrils of the patient, who remembered nothing his father had said except that in great towns young men were likely to be beset by temptations of various kinds, especially in the form of beautiful young women, who might distract his attention from business and interrupt his

studies. Strange as it may appear, our hero felt no alarm itt looking forward to the dangers that awaited him-nay he even became curious and anxious to know how these allurements would affect him, and to try his strength against temptation. Every enticement that the glass, however filled, could offer, he was amply prepared to repel; and he had a fund of good sense and sound morality to oppose to allurements which might war with duty.

We have nothing of importance to record of our pilgrim until he arrived at the end of his journey, and set foot in the famous town of Boston. As the scenes and objects connected with that image, the contemplation of which had formed as it were the key-stone of his character, and had cast a shade overall his joys-as these objects were left behind, other associations were created by the change, and his whole train of thought and feeling received a new impulse and a new direction. He still carried the arrow with him, but it ceased for a time to give pain, or control thought or action.

He passed through Charlestown without knowing that close at his left hand were the far-famed hills of Bunker and Breed's. He was rattled over the bridge, and plunged among the intricacies of "North-end," his senses almost overpowered by the awful delight which the rapid succession of new objects presented by a dim light on entering a great city for the first time, and the confused anticipations of the new life he was about to enter into while in silent expectation he awaited the long delayed moment when the coach would stop and deposit him, he knew not where, to be received he knew not how. The coach

did at length stop at an inn near the market. The passengers eagerly left the vehicle and each other, and Zeb found himself about seven o'clock in the evening of the seventh of November, in the bar room of the stage house. He knew no one—no one knew him-no one heeded him.

His trunk was thrown into the door. He looked around for some one of his fellow passengers of whom he might inquire his way to his uncle's; but all were already gone; each one his own way, unmindful of the other; and poor Zeb felt for a moment that he was alone in the world. This was but a transient feeling; his mind and body were endowed with an elasticity fitted to meet circumstances, and boldly confront them.

He saw a person busily dealing out liquor at the bar, and approached to make inquiry of him for direction to Mr. Abraham Spiffard's, but he was surrounded by a crowd boisterously demanding "bitters-brandy-gin"-and uttering coarse jests

or coarser oaths. The noise the appearance of those around him, (principally draymen, porters, hostlers, and others of the roughest cast, the attendants upon the market and the stage house) with the smell of liquors and tobacco smoke, made the poor boy's heart sink a second time, and he retired, shrinking from the loathsome scene, and sat down on his trunk to collect his thoughts: his head was whirling and dancing, as if still feeling the motion of the stage-coach, and his heart sickened at the scene before and around him. He heard the coach drive from the door. Even this was like the departure of an acquaintance-the last link that united him to home. In addi tion to the disagreeable objects that offended his physical senses, his moral sense was pained by that which was present, and by the revival or awakening of the spectre that haunted him. He thought of his mother.

This situation, either of body or mind, could not endure long with a boy of sixteen. He knew he must not remain where he was, and now recollected, for the first time, that his father had given him a letter, with, of course, the address of his uncle. It was locked up carefully in his trunk. The first movement was to open his trunk and seek it: but the thought occurred, that in such a place and with such company, that would not be eligible; he had read of tricks upon travellers. He stood undetermined, looking at the depository of his worldly treasure with somewhat of lack-lustre eye.

The suspicion that ill could be intended him by any thing in human shape, had only entered his mind from books: and only experience can make the innocent mind suspicious. He had read of deceits and falsehoods, and in after life saw and suffered from them, as all must; but suspicion never, even in after life, made a part of his character. To utter any words but those of truth, would have appeared to the Green-mountainboy as impolitic as it was absurd. This characteristic always remained with him. In despite of experience, he never could be brought to suspect his fellow-creatures of deceit; and in despite of the many inconveniences his frankness occasioned, he continued to love truth the more he suffered for truth's sake. As a man is induced to love his country the more in consequence of those miseries he encounters in her defence.

All the mental debate we have suggested, and much more, had passed in a moment of time, and the rumbling of the coach wheels had scarcely ceased in his ears, or the giddiness occasioned by riding, left his head, when once more looking around for some one to whom he might apply for that information he

had locked up in his trunk instead of his memory, he saw a person near him whose appearance did not discourage the address, and he asked this gentleman (for such he evidently was) who happened to be near him, where "Mr. Abraham Spiffard lived?"

The man was a tall, thin, upright figure, enveloped in an ample blue cloak, clasped under his chin with silver: above the collar of this cloak arose on each side of his parchmentcoloured face, three formidable curls, such as belles sometimes think ornamental to the faces of girls of sixteen, but at that period, confined to the well-powdered wigs of gentlemen of sixty. This buckram-stiff pile was surmounted by a large cocked-hat, rather brown than black-not from any lack of brushing. Below the cloak could only be seen high-topp'd shoes and silver buckles; both showing that they were daily well cleaned, though now bespattered with mud from the low and filthy place in which the stage-house stood.

"I can tell you, my little man," was the old gentleman's reply, as he looked down upon Zeb's queer face, turned up towards his own, with a slight inclination to the right, and a twist of the mouth to the left, while the earnest protrusion of his dark sparkling eyes, and the honest confidence expressed by all his features in combination, rivetted the stranger's attention to the person of our hero, though at first overlooked in his examination of the travellers who had arrived in the stage. "And what may your business be with Mr. Abraham Spiffard?"

"I have been two days riding from Long-pond in the Green Mountains, to come and pay him a visit," said Zeb, "and I have got a letter from father to him, but it is in my trunk."

Mr. Abraham Spiffard, to whom these words were addressed, had come to await the arrival of the stage, kindly anticipating the wants of his adopted son. On finding that this strange figure was the object of his expectations, he stepped back and surveyed the odd and uncouth appearance of the boy with mingled sensations, in which pleasure did not predominate. He had, in imagination, seen a tall, florid lad, rustic to be sure, but looking as vigorous, towering, independent, and fresh as the country of his birth; and he in the reality, saw a creature of diminutive height, pallid complexion and outre physiognomy; whose members appeared any thing rather than symmetrical, and whove movements under present circumstances, gave no indication of Green Mountain buoyancy, for though our hero was in truth both independent in mind and vigorous in body, his externals little denoted either; and these externals were now in their worst dress.

The uncle's good sense overpowered his feelings of chagrin ; and telling Zebediah who he was, he welcomed him to Boston, and hastily called the porter of the inn to bear the trunk of the Green-mountain-boy to his future home. This done, he courteously led his protegee to his house, which was pleasantly situated near the summit of Fort-hill.

CHAPTER VIII.

An old Bachelor's house, a Lawyer's office, and a Play in Boston.

"The principal end why we are to get knowledge here, is to make use of it for the benefit of ourselves and others in this world."-Locke.

THE reader doubtless has found out before he arrives at the present chapter, that this book is not a romance, but a story of every-day life. A fiction, it is true, but copied from real life. Yet who does not know that the events of real life are more astounding-more difficult to reconcile to ordinary reason than any romance ever written-setting aside perhaps, the delightful Arabian Nights, and some other tales in which supernatural agency is introduced? What romancer would have dared to invent such stupendous events as history records of the early crusades? Who would have dared to tell of thousands of children flying from their parents and congregating to conquer Syria from the Mussulman :-marching unappalled by difficulties over a great part of Europe, without meeting a power, moral or physical, to stop their progress to destruction inevitable? What romancer, if he had conceived such an event as the western world "loosened from its foundations and precipitated upon the east," would have dared to describe what he had imagined? or could have imagined, that from centuries of war, during which rapine was accompanied by dissolute manners, and guided by ignorance-and where famine, disease, and the sword destroyed millions-the blessings of liberty, science and the arts would arise? But to recur to later times-to the days yet scarce gone by: could poet have thought in his wildest dreams of an adventurer rising up from obscurity and binding emperors and kings in his chains; then sinking, through overweening pride, to the state of an outcast