water reached even to his chin. He strained his neck upwards. "Dum vivimus vivamus," was his motto. Now his feet appeared inclined to float. With much difficulty he prevented their breaking from their anchorage; and had it not been for the weight of the bagged ducks, shot, and other things, about him, Jemmy's toes would have no longer remained under the waves.

With outstretched neck, like a grateful fowl returning thanks for his limpid draught, Jemmy saw the first pale streak of light tinging the east. The glorious sun was peeping from his curtain. "I never shall see him set again," thought the unhappy fowler, while two large, salt tears rose to fall and mingle with the water splashing at his chin. As each wave rolled towards him, he anticipated it would reach his lips. Many came, and murmured past; but not one rose so high. At length he bent his chin a little down, and thought he saw the uppermost button of his coat begin to appear; but the fluctuation of the water was such, and the turn of the tide so slow, that it was yet some time before he dare venture to assure himself that the button was fairly above the level of the flood. No starving mariner, floating on a wreck, could behold approaching succour with greater transport, than did Jemmy, when convinced that the tide was ebbing. A second button appeared. Jemmy felt lighter than the thin air. His spirits rose as the water fell; and, although his situation, for some five hours longer, was anything but of an enviable nature, he has often since declared, he never felt happier than when watching the ebb of this tide.

108

A TALE OF THE FIRE ISLANDS.

SEQUEL TO THE FOREGOING.

BY A GENTLEMAN OF KENTUCKY.

It was during an Indian summer week of hearty, brown October, that Oliver Paul, Ned Locus, and I, once made a shooting party, and drove Ned's sorrel mares to Jim Smith's, at Scio, and thence bent canvass for the Fire Islands, to try the brant.

Before going on with my story, it may, perhaps, be dutiful in me, and desirable on behalf of people who have never studied geography, to specify the condition of the said islands. We will accomplish this cheerful office, straightway. In brief, then, they made their first appearance in the country, after a hard earthquake, some five or six hundred years ago, on the southern coast of Matowacs, latitude forty degrees and forty minutes north; longitude, seventy-three degrees and one minute west; near the occidental end of Raccoon Beach. They are two in number, and contain, in the whole, at low water, about fifty acres of marsh and mud, disposed with irregular and careless grace, and scalloped into jutting points and circling bays. The principal inhabitants are gulls and meadow-hens. The climate is saline and salubrious. The chief products of the soil are sedge-grass, birds' eggs, and clams. Yet, not unknown to "human

face divine," nor ignorant of the lofty enterprise and gentle mercies of trade, do those points and bays lie profitless. For, there John Alibi salutes the fading morning star, and the coming sun, with the heavy volleys of his yet cherished flint-lock muskets; and the tumbling wildfowl, splashing into the midst of his stool, bleed out their murdered lives, while he, reloading, counts the profits of his eager shot, and sees, with his mind's eye, the gasping victims already picked, and stalled in Fulton Market. Hence, live and flourish all the little Alibis; and hence, the princess widow, gentle mistress of the soil, rejoices in a welcome revenue.

Brother sportsmen, let me introduce to your judicious affection, my friend and comrade, Oliver Paul.-Oliver, the people. He is a plain, unpretending tiller, and a lord, moreover, of the land a Quaker, you see regular Hicksite and, like all friends that I ever yet knew, he is sometimes wet, and sometimes dry. Still, he is semper idem-always the same-and has been such for fifty years -in hot, and in cold-in total abstinence, and in generous imbibition. As Oliver is warm-hearted, I love him; as he is a good shot, I honour him; and as he can pull a discreet oar, foretel, to a certainty, where the wind is going to be on the morrow, and mark down a crippled bird more truly than any man in the republic, I always get him to go with me upon my shooting expeditions. Oliver has but few eccentric qualities. His religion is as the religion of Hicksites "in general:" his philosophy is comprised in the sententious apothegm, which is applied upon all occasions and occurrences, 66 some pork will boil that way:" his morals; he is a bachelor, and, though of a most

unmatrimonial composition, he is incessantly talking of taking a wife, or, as he terms it, "flying in" with a woman. Though from principle, and the rules of his creed, opposed to both national and individual wars, yet, strike him, and he will not turn to you his other cheek, for a repetition of the temptation. He may not strike back, but (as they do at yearly meeting, when friends cannot agree upon the choice of a clerk), he will most certainly shove you, as he would say, "like rotten." His most characteristic trait is his superintendence of the morals and manners of his neighbours. So bountiful is his benevolence, that, to protect the reputation of a friend, he scruples not to unlace and scarify his own. Walk out with him, and meet a ruddy-cheeked Rosina, with a coquettish eye, that puts the very devil into you, "Don't look, don't look, boys," he'll cry, and dig his elbows into your side, to enforce obedience to the precept, while he himself is staring into her face, until the morning-tint vermilion of her virgin blushes is lost in the scarlet-and -and-confusion-and — somebody finish that; — and then, he'll drain the last drop of liquor from the jug, for the sole, charitable purpose of preserving his brother sportsman's nerves steady. You know him now, and I have nothing more to say, except to warn you, as a friend, if you should ever be out with him in the bay, on a cold November day, on short allowance, to watch your fluids.

Ned Locus.-Ned is a young gentleman, who spends his money, and shoots, and fishes, and tells tough yarns, or a living. His uncle manages his estate; for, although Ned is now of age, yet he don't want to deprive the old man of the commissions; and, besides, ever since Ned

got his bachelor's diploma, he has forgotten his Greek and trigonometry, without which, no man can be an executor. Ned, although not strictly pious, delights not in things of this world. Mere terrestrial axioms know no lodgment in his confidence. His meditations and labours are in another sphere, an universe of his own creation. And yet, he believes himself to be a plain, practical, matter-of-fact man; one who has no fancy, who never tells his dreams for truth, nor adds a single bird or fish in the story of the sum total of his successes. There is no design, upon his part, in the choice of his place of existence, or the description of his sensations and actions. The fault, if any, lies in his original composition; his father and mother are to be blamed for it, not he. His eyes and ears are not as the eyes and ears of other men, and, truly, so is not his tongue. There is an investiture of unearthliness about everything he sees and hears. By day and by night, he is contemplating a constant mirage. He never admired a woman on account of her having flesh, blood, and such things; but, while he gazed, he worshipped some fairy incarnation, that enveloped and adorned her with unearthly grace and hypercelestial sweetnesses. Even in his reading he is an original. He never gives to a fine passage in Shakspeare its ordinary interpretation; but the brilliant light of the poet's thought is crooked, and thrown off, and sometimes made a caricature rainbow of, by the refraction of his cloudy imagination. His aunt sent him, one new-year's day, when he was at college, an old copy of the Septuagint, which she had picked up at the auction sale of the effects of a demised ecclesiastic. On receiving the present, he wrote upon