lieved by many, who supposed they had fled, that they departed down the river in the ferry-boat that had disappeared.

In the mean time the flight was continued, until Joplin reached his old haunts, in a cane-bottom on Flat Creek, a small tributary of White River. Here security was made doubly sure by the bear-rough that sheltered them, and by the distance they had removed from the settlement in Arkansas. They had, moreover, taken the precaution to locate within the boundaries of Missouri. The fugitive from justice was likewise in the vicinity of a cave, known only to himself and the red hunters who had formerly resided in this quarter of the country. In this subterranean chamber, the dry bones from a neighboring battle-field had been deposited by the tribe who had been the greatest sufferers in a sanguinary conflict. As cheerless as this place might appear, Joplin had reposed in it alone many nights on his former visit to this region of country; and in this place he had cached his furs and peltries, which now constituted his surplus for his new beginning in the world. The erection of a cabin was a task not easily completed, without the aid of neighbors for the raising; but, when the roof had been placed over their heads, and fastened there with weight-poles, and the puncheons composing the floor laid down, the mother of this little colony began to sing, and spin, and bustle about over the irregular surface with cautious footsteps, and stealthily, in her daily task. She had not forgotten the essential portions of her wheel and loom in her departure from the ruin of her old habitation, and the mechanical ingenuity of the woodsman, with his axe, augur, hand-saw, and butcher-knife, supplied the deficiency. The good woman continued still to indulge on Sunday in a clean apron, a chapter, and a comb. These were luxuries she could not readily dispense with. In his former visit to this wild region, Joplin esteemed it no hardship to refrain from the use of bread-stuffs; but he was constrained to make some apology to his wife and children for the privation he would be obliged to impose, until he could raise a crop. He however assured them, that with a mixture of bear-meat and venison, and a 'sprinkle' of turkey-breast, they would do very well without bread, provided they could get time to cut bee-trees.

This isolated family had innocence and contentment in full possession, and independence prospectively within reach. The disturber, known in the west by the name of long green' and 'blue ruin,' in Pennsylvania, old rye' and cider royal,' and by the Indians appropriately named 'fire-water,' and more emphatically fool-water,' was happily beyond their reach. The only race-path known in this new settlement was that on which the husband and wife contended for the prize of domestic comfort. In this, the fabrication of jeans by one party, and the dressing of buck-skins by the other, furnished profitable amusement. The only visit made by the daring woodsman to the settlements secured him the patriarch of a flock, and a few meek companions, from the fleeces of which the winter of his discontent' was made comfortable. In their retreat, the Joplin family were in a fair way to make their circumstances easy, by such skill as is usually acquired in frontier experience, when a hard winter, attended with much variable weather, set in earlier than was anticipated. The woodsman had exerted himself violently in the

chase, to secure his supply of bear bacon,' while the Indian Summer lasted. To this cause he attributed the 'dumb ague,' that laid him up when the first snow-storm commenced. With this disease he lingered a few weeks. The ouly medicine within reach of the settlers was a small parcel of walnut pills. Whether the bark of which these were composed had been scraped up or down the tree, so as to fit it for an emetic or a cathartic, does not appear; but no relief was afforded by administering even a double dose,' and he grew weaker as much with the repetition as by discontinuance of the remedy. When he could no longer rise without assistance, or stand alone, the anxious and confiding wife inquired, for the first time, how far it might be to the residence of the nearest neighbor. When she was told it was one hundred and sixty miles, it is uncertain which predominated in her mind, hope or despair. She continued silently and thoughtfully to minister to his wants, to the extent of her circumscribed means, until, when, late at night, the wintry winds were rudely perforating the openings around the cabin-door, and the house dogs growled a dignified response to the dismal howlings of the wolf, the hoarse death-rattle in the throat of the sufferer was perceived. This added consternation to alarm. To the earnest and almost unconscious inquiry now uttered by the trembling wife, Shall I send for a doctor? no answer was given. Her husband had expired!

The embarrassing position now occupied by the widow had never been anticipated. If her strength could have overcome the resistance of the hard-frozen earth that would enable her to say to the Indian deity of the wilderness, With pious sacrilege a grave I stole,' her force, and that of her infant children united, was insufficient for the removal of the body. Widowed destitution was never more complete. There was her dead husband on one side, and her weeping and distracted babes on the other. A single night of bitter wakefulness and watching was the last that she ventured to linger out in her dreary abode; and it seemed to her an eternity of darkness. Early on the morning after the death of her husband, the lone widow packed up a supply of provision, and, with her children, mounted, left her cabin and unburied husband to search for a neighbor. She carried the rifle with her, in order to make fire at her encampments on the journey. On closing the door on the house of mourning, the distress of parting was made doubly agonizing by an inquiry of one of the children, made in these words: Are you going to leave daddy?'

The first day's route lay up through the valley, and along the bank of the creek on which her dwelling was situated; and she was therefore guided by it. After the first night's encampment, where she had been surrounded with wolves, and nervously agitated by their howlings, and occasionally the startling scream of a panther, she resumed her journey. The little family of wanderers had marched a short distance from their place of lodging, when all knowledge of their route failed. After wandering sometimes in one direction, and then retracing their steps and striking off at some other point of the compass, the bewildered mother encamped for the second night. The next morning the half-distracted traveller determined to retrace her steps. Two days brought her back to the dreary and desolate abode. The cabin was surrounded with a snarling pack of wolves,

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Horrid Catastrophe Superstitions.

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which were contending for the remains of her little flock of sheep. These were scared away by the faithful dogs that had followed the family. The interior presented the frightful evidence of mortality. A cat had made horrid inroads on the face of the deceased, and was still feeding on the mutilated corpse! The necessity of burial was in no manner diminished by this horrid spectacle. The afflicted woman scarcely knew why she had returned. She passed another long winter night in her house of mourning, hovering with her little brood around the cheerless hearth.

When morning at last arrived, the family again departed, having confined the cat under a tub, to prevent a repetition of her cannibal feast. After a journey of five days in a southwardly direction, and when the widow began to hope she was approaching a settlement, she was cheered with the view of smoke arising from a hunter's camp. He was out in search of game, but there was an abundance of venison hanging over the embers of his camp fire. This proved a seasonable supply, for the poor woman had that morning given the last morsel of her stock of food to her children, while she piously fasted herself. The hunter was as much gratified, on his return to his camp that evening, to find it so well peopled, as he had been in the successful hunt of the day. The hospitality of the camp was profusely urged upon the strangers, and bear-meat, venison, and turkey, and elk marrow-bones, were proffered with the frank and liberal manner of a woodsman.

This camp was sixty miles from the nearest settlement; and it was speedily arranged that the hunter should accompany the family back to the house, to inter the dead husband. As the party approached the cabin, the family halted, and the hunter advanced to look into the condition of the interior, before the mourners ventured to take another gaze of horror. Hunters, as well as sailors, have their superstitions, which deduct somewhat from their general fearless bearing. They believe in charms on their rifles, and sometimes employ a person skilled in magical incantations to 'take off the spell.' It is not, therefore, unaccountable, that this woodsman felt greater apprehension in approaching the cabin where a dead body lay, than he would in conflict with an Indian, or in a close hug with an 'old he bear,' provided his butcher-knife was stiff, of approved temper, and sharp at the point. He laid out' an old she wolf with his rifle, that was scratching at the door of the desolate habitation, and was on the point of raising the latch, when he heard issuing from within a low moaning sound. Venturing to peep through an opening where the chinking had fallen out, a single glance at the frightful and mutilated corpse satisfied his heated imagination that the sound proceeded from the dead husband. He ran off with wild affright, under a full conviction that the house was haunted. The earnest entreaties of the widow induced him, in company with herself, to approach the cabin once more. They looked in at the same moment, and beheld, as their superstitious imaginations severally painted the scene before them, in the conception of the hunter, a black, cloven-footed beast, sitting on the body of the deceased, while the widow insisted that something like a swan was hovering over the remains of her dead husband. The moaning was renewed; the confinement of the cat was not

remembered, and the spectators of the horrors within ran away in despair. The hunter once more ventured near enough to the cabin to throw a torch upon its roof. When the flames had spread, and were rapidly reducing the house to a mass of vivid ruin, the funeral party mounted their horses, and turned their backs upon the ashes of the DEAD HUSBAND.

THE DYING BOY.

BY THE LATE J. HUNTINGTON BRIGHT, ESQ.

It must be sweet in childhood to give back
The spirit to its Maker, ere the heart
Hath grown familiar with the paths of sin,
And soon to gather up its bitter fruits.

I knew a boy, whose infant feet had trod
Upon the blossoms of some seven springs,

And when the eighth came round, and called him out
To revel in its light, he turned away,

And sought his chamber to lie down and die.

'Twas night; he summoned his accustomed friends,
And on this wise bestowed his last request:

'Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear.' 'Julius Cæsar.'

WHATEVER Conflicts with the opinions or prejudices of mankind, must commend itself to public favor by something more than its simple truth, or according to the world's estimate of its danger or folly, persecution or ridicule will ever wait upon its progress to general belief.

6

The phrenologist has not been compelled to ascend the scaffold, nor has he been tortured with a slow fire of green wood,' for his heretical opinions; and for this mercy, he is indebted to the enlightenment of the age in which he first proclaimed his discoveries: but he has been preserved, in order to be 'roasted' by the burning satire of his contemporaries, and to be served up' for the gratification of those epicures in wit, who, with the aid of a good tailor, can do more for the cause of truth by a look and a laugh, than a Gall or a Spurzheim, by the labors of a life. To these laughing philosophers, your phrenologist is a very eccentric man indeed very; to their humble apprehensions, his science appears quite stupid — quite; and all he converses about, appears to them to be nothing more nor less than 'bumpology,' positively. Moreover, they have heard some amusing anecdotes upon the subject. A travelling disciple of this wonderful science, who wrote out characters for eighteen pence per head, once departed from the scene of his labors without paying his bill, and his landlord was represented as so far becoming a convert to his guest's theory, as to believe in the organ of unpayativeness !'

These philosophers ill conceal their mirth at the frequent occurrence of mistakes made by those gentlemen termed practical phrenologists, and have been known to violate every rule for the sup

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