sultation that night that something portentous | but, spent his last cent in taking up, to prevent ought to come out of it.

Twitter in the mean time was happy. He drank his wine, and was so exceeding witty and agreeable that Hercules at parting slapped him on the shoulder, and told him that if ever he wanted a friend to come to him.

V.-A THUNDER CLAP.

Halibut, senior, was sitting in his library the day after the party recorded in our last chapter, smoking his cigar, and musing over his last speculation, when a servant entered and informed him that a gentleman calling himself Mr. Hercules wished to see him. Halibut, senior, started at the message, but, recovering himself, told the servant to show the gentleman in.

"What folly!" he soliloquized, when he was again alone. "What folly to be startled at a Eame. He's dead and rotten long ago."

The door opened, and a tall man with a very long, red beard, and long red hair, entered. Halibut gave a sigh of relief as the man appeared, and muttering "It isn't him," asked the visitor to be seated.

a family disgrace; and now I, that same Hercules Halibut, your brother, who went before the mast to Australia after spending my fortune to save your honor, and who now, thanks to my good fortune, return worth half a million of dollars, I insist on your giving me a check for the sum I name, drawn in the name of your son. He does not want it-because I am richer than you are. But I exact this to punish you, my brother, and to induce you to reflect that there are other duties in life besides the accumulation of dollars."

"I'll write the check," said old Halibut, thoroughly crushed; "but I thought you were dead, Hercules."

"Not half so dead as you are, Gilbert. you are dead to all family affection."

For

So saying, Hercules Halibut divested himself of his red beard and red wig, and going to the door, unlocked it, and called to sorae one without.

Halibut, junior, entered the room. "Here," said Hercules, "is your marriageInstead of being seated, the visitor locked the portion. You can marry Alice Heriott to-mordoor. He then drew a revolver from his breast-row, my boy; and tell old Heriott, that to the pocket, cocked it, placed a chair directly oppo- sum you hold in your hand I will add as much site his petrified companion, and quietly sat more." down.

"Mr. Halibut," said he, "I want a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Be good enough to sign a check for the amount."

"Are you mad, man?" gasped Halibut, very pale, and stretching his hand toward the bellpull. The hand stopped midway, however, as the barrel of the revolver was lifted in a direct line with the merchant's head.

Gilbert grasped his uncle's hand silently. Then he looked at his father.

"So! this has been a plot prepared between you," hissed old Halibut between his teeth.

"Father!" cried the young man, making a step forward. One kind word-one soft lookand he would have been at his father's feet.

"Off, you vagabond!" cried the old merchant. "I never want to see your face again.

“I want a hundred and fifty thousand dol- Take what you've got, and go!" lars," repeated the impassible visitor.

"I-I haven't got it," stammered Halibut, sinking back in his chair.

"You lie!" said the red man, very calmly. "I-could-perhaps, get it to-morrow. But," suddenly Halibut burst out, exasperated into courage, "who are you? What claim have you on me? Are you a burglar? or-get out of my house this instant!"

"I have this much claim, Mr. Halibut. You are a bad man. You have wealth, but you spend your money badly. You are insensible to the tenderest ties known to man. You are a selfish egotist, devoted to making money. I wish to see wealth equalized. Now I know a very poor young man that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars would just make comfortable."

"Who is this protegé of yours?" asked Halibut, forced into calmness by the tone of conscious power with which the other spoke.

"Your son, Mr. Halibut."

"Come, Gilbert," said Hercules, sadly. 'Come, let us leave this place. It is not good for a son to see his father thus."

Old Halibut bit his lips next week when he beh d Broadway alive with carriages, all pouring to the wedding reception of Mrs. Gilbert Halibut, junior, née Heriott.

Twitter was in his glory at that wedding. He borrowed five hundred dollars of Hercules, who was glad to lend it, paid his debts, bought a magnificent wedding-suit, and paid extravagant attention to Miss Potosé, who was worth two millions. He looked as if he was worth three. I should not be surprised if he married her in the end.

THE

DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. THE human race has been studying, with singular want of success, for many centuries, the secret of happiness. Never having had any time to study, the secret came to me by intuition. I was traveling in the West (not that any body who goes to the West may hope to meet with a similar revelation-there was much "Oh, yes, but he will though," said the red truth in the traveler's reflection that the farther man, quietly taking a pocket-book from his coat. West he went, the more he believed that the "Here are notes forged to that amount by Gil-wise men came from the East), toward the setbert Halibut, which his brother, Hercules Hali- ting sun was I wending my way, when, like

"He shall never have a shilling, by Heaven!" exclaimed the old man, striking his hand furiously on the table.

Mohammed, like Joseph Smith, like Brigham | door-plates; above all, write it in your hearts, Young, and like all the impressible recipients and you have the secret of human happiness. of modern spiritual manifestations, I was visited, clothed, descended upon, made wise, by a revelation.

Make your standard a high one. Create for yourself an idol, a perfect Juggernaut of human disagreeability. Collect the statistics of human I can not say it came in any one visible form. meanness; wrap it in that sort of body which On the contrary, I am inclined to believe that a most effectually disgusts you; above all add great many visible forms were to me the means boastfulness and braggadocio to your mixture, by which the truth was made known. I was and then set it in a niche where you will pernot in a trance, or in a highly-excited intellect-petually see it. Demand, then, that all disaual state. I was very sleepy and very dusty; I was very miserable, for I was traveling in a rail-car surrounded by four hundred of my beloved fellow-creatures. This is not in its general features like the state in which enthusiasts have described themselves when great truths fell upon them. Solitude, fasting, contemplation, silence, these fit the mind of man for spiritual manifestations; any thing further from a state of ecstasy than mine could not be imag-citement you have provided for yourself! You ined.

Yet it came. To a humble individual clothed in a linen sack, and carrying a mundane carpetbag, came the greatest revelation ever made to the human race, namely, the secret of happi

ness.

I was reflecting in this manner, Why am I so cross, so unhappy, so uncomfortable? Because I am so warm, so dusty, and so poor. But other people are as warm, as dusty, and as poor as I am. Behold the brakeman-he is a living incarnation of warmth, dust, and poverty, and yet hear him laugh! Why, then, when I am not warm, dusty, or particularly poor, am I also unhappy? Because I am generally surrounded by disagreeable people. Very true. Why, then, are so many people made disagreeable?

Here, I remember, my philosophical calmness of answer failed me. Here I could not answer myself with that promptness which had heretofore characterized me. Suffice it, then, to say, people were generally disagreeable. Emily Brown was not; but old Brown, her father, was. Why could not the car have been filled with Emily Browns!

But it was not; therefore I must suffer in silence the proximity of people who were not at all like Emily Brown.

Then it came. Like all great truths, it should be given to the world. I do not wish to be selfish with my great discovery. Let it reach to the uttermost limits of human intelligence.

Since the world is filled with disagreeable people, cultivate a taste for disagreeable people! That sentence should be written in letters of brass or gold (as is most convenient) on the City Hall, Custom-house, Grace Church, the Pyramids (of Egypt), Pompey's Pillar, St. Peter's, Westminster Abbey, Halls of Education, and the California steamers.

No place is too lofty or too lonely for the dissemination of this truth. Cry it in the market-place, mention it (cautiously and anonymously) at Washington, write it on your garments, carve it on your seals, and append it to your

greeability shall come up to this darling of your imagination. Make it your dear, delightful study to collect little gems of human hatefulness wherewith to enrich your idol. Come home to him from your business and your pleasures, and if there is an evil trait which you have discovered in your day's intercourse, hang it like a pearl around his neck. When you go out to your next day's work, what an agreeable ex

select disagreeable people. They are your passion-that very dirty and selfish person who crowds you in the omnibus is the very man you want. There are volumes to be read in that man. You may add infinitely, by observing him, to your favorite subject. He may be to you what the fin of a fish is to Agassiz. Not only yourself, but the whole human race may be benefited by your morning's ride.

He jostles you, he shuts down the window out of which you are looking and breathing. You remonstrate; he is brutal and stands on his rights. You determine to get out; but your better angel comes to your rescue and you determine to remain, remembering the dear idol at home. You are glued to your seat; Juggernaut shall have the advantage of the observation.

A woman gets in; she is neither young nor pretty so he contrives to jostle her, causes her to stumble, laughs coarsely at her confusion, and refuses to make room. Another gets in who is young and pretty: he stares at her, tries to make room for her next his interesting self, and annoys her generally.

You conclude you have picked up enough for Juggernaut, and get out at the City Hall in a very delighted frame of mind.

While in your office, busily writing and hopelessly intending to get through before dinner, Culvert Jowls, a "rising young man," waits upon you. He has known you in college; he was your favorite abomination there. He knows it, but forgives it; or perhaps Culvert is profoundly unforgiving, and inflicts upon you the worst revenge he has in his power-his own slimy self.

Your ire rises within you; you determine to insult him, to get rid of him. No! a soft restraining hand is laid upon your impatient temper; it is your love of science. Culvert, the "rising young man," approximates very nearly to your highest standard of disagreeability. Like an almost perfect work of art, there is nothing to add and very little to take away from Culvert. Smooth, oily, upturned-eyed, soft-voiced, and velvet-footed, you know that he has cheated his mother, that he perpetually cheats a loving and

sins.

unsuspecting sister, that he has broken his own consequence, it is of some other person's wife's heart, that he is a living lie from head to Finally, she paints you a monster of defoot, an incorporated selfishness, a coward at pravity: you almost quail to think such enormiheart. The only brave point about him is, that ty exists. You shudder that the soft voice of he dares to pretend to be a saint, and that to a woman should be the vehicle through which you, who cudgeled him at school, and knew all so much vice is made known and patent. You his vileness at college! And you respect a pre-endeavor to escape, but she walks you up and tense so mighty, and, considering how much of down a piazza from whence you see Arabella a pretense it is, you believe him to have a great-Claymore, Emily Brown-and, can it be! the ness of soul which commands your respect. guilty Millefleur-all going boating, to have a "splendid time." Maliciously you point out the party to Mrs. M. She then tells you in sweetest accents that Emily Brown is the very monster she has been describing, and winds up with "Poor girl."

He stays four hours. You glance at your papers hopelessly. You hint, but he does not understand; you are compelled to say-but he interrupts you. What sustains you but a love of science? He talks of himself, of the money he makes, of the good he is doing, and, above all, of the serenity of his own soul! Beautiful lesson! You think of your standard, and determine to cast it to the dogs and erect Culvert in its place.

Finally, he tells you that he has met Emily Brown. That deeply afflicted as he is by his wife's death (he is a soft and tender widower), yet so unmistakable are the signs of Miss Brown's preference that

The appetite of the tiger for human flesh is not interesting to the unfortunate traveler who, deserted by his convoy, finds himself afflictingly near the hot breath of one of those agile creatures in an Indian jungle. But suppose that man to have gone to India, not for base purposes of commerce, but to examine the characteristics of the tiger. Imagine that before his eyes floats an enormous book-"Somebody on Tigers." Every glimpse of the tiger becomes valuable. His own life, his comfort, become secondary considerations. Science and love of fame sustain the feeble flesh. So I, impelled by love of science, and sustained by the vision of this article which is to cover me with glory as with a garment, cultivated and endured Mrs. Millefleur. When I got home I added to the ornaments of Juggernaut-her soft voice saying

Love of science vanishes; you tell him what you think of him; he goes on-you kick him down stairs. On the second landing he brings up, bruised yet smiling, black and blue yet bland and forgiving, and tells you he forgives you, and regrets to learn by the violence of your treatment how much you must be interested in Miss Brown. What a necklace you hang that night on the viperous things, her delicate face expressing the neck of Juggernaut !

worst and meanest passions, and her constant boredom-her never-ceasing, all-beginning conversation, and I assure you it was a horribly valuable addition.

The pomposity of dear old Brown, Emily's father, who didn't like me, his bowing down before that calf of a Johnson who was rich (as why shouldn't he be? old J. packed pickles and did it well, and young J. found a snug plum in preserve for him), was formerly disagreeable to

In your summer at the sea-shore you begin to feel that you have less opportunity than usual to study your favorite science. Emily is there, and tells you she detests Culvert. Somehow the disagreeables have vanished; perhaps a phantom of themselves pursued them and they jumped into the sea. But no! at breakfast you recognize Mrs. Millefleur. She is somewhat young and pretty, thinks herself younger and prettier. She talks perpetually of herself and of Mille-me. fleur, and of Wildopolis, where she was born. She adores politics and worships Millefleur. You, of course, know that her family are the "very first" in Wildopolis, and Wildopolis is the first city in the Union. You have, she has heard, good singing in New York; but did you know that your favorite prima donna, whom you supposed an Italian, was born and educated in Wildopolis, and the Wildopolitans wouldn't listen to her? Then New York bread is so unendurable, so much fresher and more countrified To be sure I still talk to Emily, but her father than Wildopolis bread. As for Millefleur, a very is my attraction. She is the olive which stimgood bull-dog of a fellow, he (unlike you) isulates my tongue, but old B. is the roast beef bored with his wife-probably because he has not had the revelation you have had of the secret of happiness-and flirts, or is disposed to flirt, with Arabella Claymore, the fast girl of the season.

Mrs. Millefleur puts her little hand inside your white linen coat-sleeve and fastens you for the morning. When she isn't talking of her

Now, in consequence of my revelation, old Brown is a deeply interesting study to me. I like to see him believe himself a philanthropist. I like to see him think himself above selfish considerations, while he talks of young Johnson's amiable character and good habits, when he knows that young J. is a selfish and vulgar voluptuary. I like to see him put a dollar on the contribution-plate with the air of its being twenty-and he regrets it is not more, but that is all he can afford.

which satisfies my appetite. I bear with his vulgar patronage, his low-bred assumptions— for the sake of science.

Your society snob was formerly my aversion. Now he is my pet macaw; I admire his lovely plumage, his gracious airs, when he sees his superior macaw approach. I admire his graceful timidity of being seen with a poor relation, his

there is the army of bores; there is the school of elderly, bookish, pretentious, and hard-featured women; there is the mean and narrow woman, who has the unwomanly attribute of penuriousness; there is the gushing, spontaneous, frank woman, who is as deep as the sea, and as past finding out as the ways of the wind, only that she blows nobody any good. The variety is infinite, the supply is inexhaustible.

How I lost my taste for all that is not disaagreeable, ask

pretty confusion when his cousin Grandiose sees | there is the fool who believes himself a Solon; him receiving an obligation from his cousin Rusticus. Rusticus is rich and generous, and oblivious of snob-weakness; or if he knows it, he is pleasantly unconscious of it, as a lion lets an impertinent puppy play with his beard. Still Rusticus has no position in society, and dresses fearfully. Unfortunately Rusticus will go to the opera, where Snob walks nightly in the wake of Grandiose, to whom he is distantly connected by marriage. How delicious to see are Snob's writhings as Rusticus, remembering with a glow of pleasure how happy he was to loan Snob some money in the morning, presumes Snob will be equally happy to talk with him in the evening. Then do I cultivate Snob, then do I eavesdrop, that no gem of degradation, no lovely | lie of self-disrespect, no contortions of a mean soul, may escape me. Sometimes I think I love Snob better than any variety of my pet reptiles. Unfortunately he is not quite rare enough to be priceless; I can almost always find a perfect specimen, which is, as every naturalist knows, almost a misfortune.

Delicious Mrs. Aminadab Sleek! How I used to loathe the weeks which a cruel destiny, and a distant relationship compelled me to spend at your country house! How I reprobated above all things your intense hypocrisy! How you profaned in my eyes all that was most lovely and pure! Now, as a perfect specimen of your class, how I adore you! How I love that temper of yours, which, like Sykes's dog, snarls and growls at every body who is not of your set! How I admire your devotion to hours and days of public worship, and your disregard of the dinner hour of Mr. Sleek! How I like your dignified contempt of that hard-worked and thin individual, and your adoration of your Aunt Fangs, who is such a lovely character that she looks savage enough to be cannibal, and who tells you that love for your husband and children is a weakness, a low degrading sentiment, a temptation of the flesh, and that a high and elevated human character is one which loves only the church-and herself.

How I love to see you abstain from amusements, from the opera where you would hear a depraved woman sing a beautiful song, and to see you devote that evening to tearing your beloved sister in the church into tatters! How I love your fine sense of honor and truth, when you uphold your favorite clergyman in his course of tergiversation and cringing, and condemn your neighbor for openly holding the same opinions which cause your clergyman to cringe! Oh! Mrs. Aminadab, you stalk abroad. Our cities, our villages, know you by heart-if you are not interesting as a specimen, how can you be endured at all?

There is the man with the sickly smile who will not take any hint that you do not wish to be persecuted by his visits, who understands no persuasions but the heel of a boot, who admits no soft impeachment but that of a crab stick; VOL. XV.-No. 89.-S s

No! the soft eyes of my wife are looking unconscious reproaches at me. Old Brown is dead, "that good old man." I treated my long endurance of him to the delightful reward of marrying his daughter. I did not "shed a many tears" for one of the choicest of my specimens ; I bore old Brown's death with composure, the calmness of a philosopher and man of scienceknowing as I did that I had but to go into Wall Street to replace him, should I ever forget him.

Fearing that my favorite science may grow upon me too much, and wishing to avoid Scylla without embracing Charybdis, I confine myself principally to the society of my wife, and women of her stamp, who are not too religious to love their husbands, play with their children; those pure ones to whom all things are pure; whose spotless hands can touch, without being defiled, the fevered brow of the Magdalen; who emulate a charity which has on it the seal of Heaven; who can look unmoved on the superior beauty of other women; who can love and forgive; who can read and yet not quote; who can enjoy, and get a little cross occasionally, and have to be forgiven; who sometimes forget what year Charlemagne died, but never what hour Charles comes home to dinner. With the same virtuous intentions I sometimes spend my time with some good and agreeable fellows. Very much do I affect some excellent men who honor that cloth which so many degrade-men of courage, of true goodness and honesty-one such man, whom I hear on Sunday, knocks Juggernaut off his pedestal. When I see the earnest face, the small feeble figure, infused with a mighty soul-when I behold his life, so worthy of its mission-I do not study my favorite science so attentively.

When at my club I meet men of refinement, of manliness, devoid of pretense, I conclude not to give myself up entirely to my favorite science.

But let me assure you it is a great revelation, a great truth. You can not complain of want of opportunity, you will not be driven to foreign countries, out on the deep and dangerous waters, into the academies of science, or the halls of medical colleges for specimens. They are to be found on the highways and by-ways. Unlike most sciences, it can be pursued together with your ordinary avocations. Let your motto be, COME ON, YE DISAGREEABLES!"

66

THE SIEGE OF FORT ATKINSON.

NEXT

I.

daily expected with the presents. There could not have been less than 10,000 in all, many of whom were encamped in the immediate vicinity of the fort; though the "big village" was some ten miles farther up the river, where the pasturage was better, and fire-wood more easily obtained.

JEXT to Kit Carson, unquestionably the two most notorious characters in all the region of the Far West, at the present time, are Bill Bent and Yellow Bear, war-chief of the Arrapaho Indians. The name of Bent is too well known to require a card of introduction to the The scarcity of fuel and grass is the chief inpublic. Yellow Bear has ever been Bent's warm-convenience experienced by this fort, though est friend, and has saved that old trader's life for in other respects it is by no means agreeably him time and time again. His influence is prob- situated-its location having been chosen solely ably greater than that of any individual chief with a view to the accommodation of the neighamong all the Indian tribes, and it is due chiefly boring Indian tribes and the protection of the to him that Uncle Sam has been enabled to keep Santa Fé trade. The Arkansas River flows the peace for so many years with two of the within a few rods of its walls, having a depth most powerful nations of the plains-the Chey- of three or four feet at certain seasons of the ennes and the Arrapahoes. In Yellow Bear, year; but in summer, like most of the prairie Cooper might have found his beau ideal of the streams, its bed is generally nearly dry. The red child of the forest; for, physically a man in surrounding country is a barren waste, without the highest sense of the word, his intellectual vegetation, save a few shrub bushes and the capacity is all that could be expected from a crispy buffalo grass, diversified only by innumind without culture. Of great personal brav-merable sand hills. No wood is to be had ery, whether in battle or in the council, of profound sagacity and unshaken purpose, together with a rare modesty, a kindly disposition, and a magnanimous contempt of insult, his friends and allies worship him, while foes respect but fear him. Beneath the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, or along the banks of many a prairie creek and river, the wilderness has been the silent witness of scenes of strife and carnage that would curdle the blood and blanch the cheek; of which, betimes, some brief recital is borne eastward to shock incredulous ears. There is a startling history connected with the protracted siege of Bent's Fort during the winter just past, of which some half-distorted facts have been doled out in meagre parcels to readers of newspaper literature; and a moral, too, which if duly considered by those who have in charge the management of our Indian affairs, might be of practical benefit in the future. So, also, there is in every such event-which calls loudly for an amendment of the present policy as respects the Indian tribes. The following trite-on the sparse and abominable pasturage, and ly-told incidents are fraught with illustrations bearing upon this point, and with this view are now for the first time recorded on the printed page.

*

It is some five years since the startling intelligence was brought from the Plains, by way of Independence, Missouri, that Fort Atkinson on the Arkansas River had been captured by the Indians, and its garrison massacred; and that Bent's and King's wagon-trains had also been intercepted, and every one of the party murdered. Fortunately the report afterward proved untrue, though it was by no means without foundation. It was in the month of July, 1852, the time for the distribution of the annuities and presents to the allied tribes of the Kiowas and Comanches, that the Indians of the aforesaid tribes were assembled in vast numbers in the vicinity of Fort Atkinson, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Charles Fitzpatrick, the agent for the Comanches, who, already behind time, was

within thirteen miles; and "buffalo chips," the dernier resort for fuel, once found in great abundance, are now quite scarce, the buffalo having almost entirely disappeared from this vicinity. The fort itself is of adobé, or sundried brick, roofed with canvas, containing fair accommodations for the garrison, and defended by a few small field-pieces and the usual armament. It has also a large corral on one side, five feet in height, for the protection of the animals. A garrison of ninety men (infantry, 6th regiment) and twenty B dragoons comprised the entire force at the date of our narrativesurprisingly deficient for so important a post.

Two weeks had nearly elapsed since the time appointed for the distribution of presents, but no agent yet made his appearance. The Indians had thus far borne the unwarrantable delay with remarkable patience, considering their naturally restless and irritable disposition, and the by-no-means-pleasing consciousness that they were, day by day, half-starving their horses

rapidly eating themselves out of all kinds of provisions-most of them, too, having traveled hundreds of miles to meet the agent at the time appointed. To this was added the suspicion of the red men (ever mistrustful of the whites) that they were to be cheated of their annuities. Thus, as day after day passed by, and still no agent came, they became more and more uneasy, and soon began to manifest unmistakable evidences of hostility. Indeed, the proposition was warmly espoused by many of the younger men that their treaty with the United States should be at once annulled, the annuities rejected, and an exterminating war declared; but the plan received little favor with the head men. They began now to gather around the fort in great numbers, threatening to annihilate the garrison if the presents were not speedily forthcoming, and occasionally endeavoring to force their way inside the gate. In vain the officers expostulated. They knew,