sound of our Easy Chair, we involuntarily turn to the window, and look in the direction from which it comes. So do all our neighbors, right and left; so do all the passers-by in the street below, old and young, men, women, and children, and the whole movement of the moment suspends itself while we watch the pursuit. No matter what has been stolen or from whom, the thief has been scented, tracked, and is in full view, and must be stopped; and as the cry gathers strength at every corner, and finds an echo under every door-way, the excitement becomes intense, and every one longs to

of the Easy Chair was rejoiced at observing that the little children of the Everybody family, whose blanched cheeks and listless limbs, in the early summer, told a sad story of confinement among the brick walls and stone pavements, and the unhealthy city habits and hours, which begin so soon to do the work of destruction upon our boys and girls, had brought home a fresh bloom, and a new infusio of life. It was a pleasure to kiss those ruddy cheeks and pouting lips, just retouched by the loving Master-hand which paints the myriad hues of field and flower. It was a pleasure to hear their laugh again, all the cheerier for the long play-have a hand on the collar of the culprit, and to help hours among the pine-woods and along the ocean sands, of which they have so much to tell; and their little hands clasped the arms of the Easy Chair with a firmer grasp for having gathered through so many sunny days the shells and the pebbles beside the beach, or clung, in their merry sports, to the long branches of the elms and the willows. They come home from the country and its rare delights as from some wonderful theatre, where Nature has been the showman, and has shifted the scenes so skillfully that the last was always the fairest. For the sake of the children we regret that there is no more summer, and sigh for the green groves and running streams, for which, in our eyes, troops of happy children are a fitter tenantry than all the fabled nymphs and naiads of the old mythology.

The Everybody men and women, too, though they all grumble and complain about it, have had, on the whole, a pretty good time. They come back with improved color and loosened waistcoats and belts. They have had their intervals of enjoyment between those periods of miseries preluded by the gong and administered by marching waiters, and have got more nearly the worth of their money than they are willing to admit. One thing is very certain: that toward the end of next February they will begin to ask each other where they are going for the next summer, and its returning heats will find them all again in the same places, suffering the same privations of which they now complain. People are fond of fancying themselves victims and martyrs. There is a native longing in us all for misery, real or fancied, and the facilities afforded for its exercise in the summer resorts are rather in favor of their popularity. About a million and a half of dollars, lawful money of the United States, are left at Saratoga alone every season in exchange for the privilege of doing penance in the cells of its mammoth hotels during the hot weather, and grumbling about it during the cold weather.

But whatever are the evils which we suffer from our country friends, they deal with us much better than we deal with them when they come to town. They give us the best they have, and cook it as well as they know how, and charge as much as they dare; but they play no drop-games nor panelgames upon us; they exhibit no patent safes; they seduce us into no mock auctions; they tempt us with no extravagances; they publish no quotations of fancy stocks; they have no bulls or bears running loose in the street. When we think of all that our country cousins suffer at our hands, there seems to be room for a theory of retribution in the tough chickens and leathery beef-steaks which they visit upon us and upon our children.

in dragging him to justice. But suppose it turns out that the shout was raised out of pure malice or wantonness; suppose the so-called thief is as honest a citizen as any one of the hundreds on the sidewalks, and as soon as he perceives that he is the object of so much public attention, turns and confronts his slanderers, and they slink off without attempting a syllable of proof or explanation, and without any word of retraction or reparation, might not the crowd on curb-stone and door-step, and from the open windows, justly prolong the cry of "Stop thief!" and turn it upon those who were thus caught in the very act of an attempted larceny of that good name, the value of which, compared with one's purse, we might quote Shakspeare to illustrate, if the quotation were not familiar enough to save us the trouble, and if there needed any authority to point our meaning.

Now there are other things besides pocket-books and gold watches which may become the subjects of larceny, petty or grand, and in respect to which also the cry of "Stop thief!" may be raised-sometimes with truth, sometimes in such a way that the accusers find themselves, instead of the accused, in the pillory of public ridicule. There is a great deal of loose, unclaimed thunder lying about, which is easily carried off. Some people are so unfortunate as always to have their ideas stolen without themselves suspecting the loss until they recognize them in the possession of somebody else. There never yet was a successful invention which was not claimed by a score or two of people who invented it long before the original inventor, and who whine piteously when the Patent Office and the public unite in stupidly refusing to recognize their claims to all the glory and all the profits, though backed by their own unaided assertion. There has rarely been a successful book in which thousands of people have not discovered the very thoughts which they themselves had before it was ever in print, which they would have expressed if they had only known how, and published if they had only had a chance. These unfortunate beings generally resign themselves to their fate; and the grand burglars and highwaymen, such as Milton and Shakspeare, and the lesser thieves, such as Dickens and Thackeray, though well known to have been famous appropriators, go unexposed and unpunished. Sometimes, however, when an offender of less note is found among the light-fingered fraternity of authorship, the cry of "Stop thief!" is all of a sudden raised about his ears with a clamor which shows him what bad company he has got into.

We had an illustration of this in the recent hue and cry got up, aided by the respectability of band and surplice, and the juvenility of pinafore and ringlets, touching the authorship of a very popular WHEN we hear the cry of "Stop thief!" within poem. The public were gravely asked to believe

that the author did not write it, but that a young | Tinshingle; "I wash my hands of such proceedings lady of fifteen dropped the idea and the beginning as these. They are all irregular and unprofessionand end of the poem (which, by-the-way, Byron al. Here are a parcel of young fellows who have says are the most difficult parts), at a corner of the got hold of injunctions, and mandamuses, and cerstreet somewhere up-town, and only awoke to a tioraris, and are employing them with just about consciousness of her loss when she discovered what as much discretion as children would exhibit with a tremendous body had inserted itself between the lighted candles among an assorted stock of firelost extremities, and was parading in all the ef- works. They are setting off their rockets, and Rofrontery of print before her eyes. man candles, and wheels, and crackers, in all directions, making a great whizzing, and phizzing, and banging without any useful result and at public expense; and, what is worse, hitting and hurting somebody at every shot. In the good old days we should all have been up at Saratoga at this season, attending the Court of Chancery or the Court of Errors, and drinking Congress water, instead of stewing and Special Terming it here in New York. But what can you expect from the present order of things? The Code and the Elective Judiciary were the two gunpowder plots against the peace and dignity of our profession, and unfortunately they both succeeded. To change the subject, have you read the opinions of the Judges of the Court of Appeals in the great case of the North American Twist and Bamboozle Company ?”

It is usual for claimants of stolen goods to "prove property." This little formality is quite essential when there are two claimants, and the one in possession is reputable, has never had his title questioned, denies flatly that any body else is entitled to it, and plants himself on his simple casting back of the charge. In the present instance, the propriety of proving, or attempting to prove, the charge does not seem to have entered the heads | of the accusers, and not a particle of evidence is furnished to justify us in holding up the youthful claimant, as we might have done had the story been true, to the admiration of the world, as the first female writer who, at fifteen, ever wrote or planned a satire on her own sex!

wardly digested every thing which has ever appeared in print and attained a circulation of more than one copy.

"Very well," asks Mr. Tinshingle, "are you prepared to defend them ?"

Our old friend, Fustic, who has been on the Prize Composition Committee at divers times in Sun- We remind Tinshingle that an Editorial Easy dry Institutions devoted to the embroidery, trim-Chair is presumed to have read, marked, and inming, and fancy decoration of the intellects of young ladies, says that he has repeatedly been amazed at discovering the originals of striking essays by Addison, Hannah Moore, and equally distinguished authors, and of poems by Campbell, Mrs. Hemans, and the other Modern British Poets, in the efforts of the rising female generation at these seats of learning, and he declares, that if he only had the ability to put it in proper style, he could produce, "New law-new law," says Mr. Tinshingle, with from his experience, a surprising magazine article an expression of face which indicates that to an on the Obligations of English Literature to Amer-old lawyer the very idea of new law is poisonous. ican School-girls. He shakes his head over this new claim of authorship, and says, dryly, that there is more imagination displayed in the story of the lost manuscript than there is in the real poem itself.

We quietly ward off this blow by inquiring of Mr. Tinshingle whether he is prepared to attack them.

The Court is beside itself; it has turned a complete summerset, swallowed its own decisions, upset its own dicta, and kicked its own precedents out of doors. I want you to enlighten the public about. the matter."

"New law or old law, it seems to us," we reply, "a very honest and wise conclusion that has been reached, and one which reflects great credit on our Judiciary. All that the public care particularly to know about it is what they know already, that certain heavy creditors (many of them foreigners, unacquainted with our laws) of an insolvent corpora-. tion, who have been pursuing their claims for fifteen

through all the labyrinthine delays of the law, have at last succeeded, and will get the money which is due them, or whatever is left of it after so long a litigation; and that the law of this State is to pay and not to repudiate honest debts."

Mr. TINSHINGLE, who has practiced in the legal profession in the city and county of New York for the last forty years, and who has so identified himself with our commerce that his name and opinions on the subject of bottomry and ship-chandlery are mentioned with respect off Cape Horn and in the China seas, paid us a domiciliary visit a few days ago. Mr. Tinshingle goes about like an old alche-years against all manner of technical objections and mist, turning every thing he touches into law, Whatever he does partakes of the character of a legal proceeding. He carries the odor of the courts about with him as hostlers do the smell of the stables. His most casual conversation is a summing up, his invitation to dinner is in the nature of an arrest, and his most friendly call is a sort of special session. He put his hand into his pocket and we expected a subpæna, but he produced instead a pocket handkerchief, and after wiping his brows, seated himself, and only replied to our salutation when the time to answer had fully expired. We perceived at a glance that Mr. Tinshingle was not in a very good humor.

Mr. Tinshingle shakes his learned head. "You are in a state of gross darkness about the whole matter," he observes, "and you overlook the most important fact, that in this case there was a—Fund, and a-Receiver, and when you have a Fund and a Receiver you must know that questions of honesty or dishonesty, of paying or repudiating, don't enter into the question. Let me enlighten your ignorance. Here was the Twist and Bamboozle Company, which was got up for the express purpose of borrowing money of every body. When it had borrowed every body's money it failed. It had stockholders; it had creditors; it had assets. Now if there had been assets enough to pay all the credNot my points, if you please," responds Mr.itors and all the stockholders, they would both have VOL. XV.-No. 89.-Yr

"Rather brisk times, these, for gentlemen of your profession," we remarked; you manage to keep the courts busy in vacation, to pit the judges against each other, and the newspapers are bristling with your points!"

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been satisfied, but by some unavoidable accident it | your whole establishment, types, presses, machinturned out that there was not half enough to pay ery, plates, sheets, and books, into the hands of a the creditors, to say nothing of the stockholders. Receiver to conduct the business and edit the MagThe officers of the Company had put the most of azine under the order of the Court." its property in the hands of Trustees to protect the largest creditors; and while the other creditors and the stockholders are looking wistfully at the remaining assets, along comes the Chancellor and puts them into the hands of a Receiver-and a Receiver," continued Mr. Tinshingle, pausing and throwing himself back in his chair as if more perfectly to enjoy the idea which the word suggested, of a being quite too

"bright and good

For Human Nature's daily food"

"a Receiver is one of the most interesting and, I might say, sublime objects which can be presented to the legal mind. He is the offspring of Chancery and Insolvency. He is inseparably identified with a Fund. He acts only by advice of counsel. He subsists on motions and interlocutory orders. He is always petitioning the Court, and asking that something or other be granted with costs. He is the good genius of attorneys and solicitors. He moves in an atmosphere of taxable items and commissions, and special proceedings and general equity. He is, if I may be allowed the expression, the grandest embodiment of a legal fiction. Now what was the duty of the Receiver in this case?"

"Very simple, we should suppose; to turn the assets into money, deduct his commissions, distribute the balance among the creditors, and go about his business."

There is a returning gleam of sunshine on Tinshingle's face as he closes his argument, which lights into certainty what we had surmised all along, that this wily veteran of the Bar had been feeling the pulse of public opinion through its great artery, the Easy Chair, and, concealing his own satisfaction at the decision he denounced for the purpose of assuring himself of the satisfaction of the community in general. We accuse him of the stratagem, but he pulls out his watch, and says he must go to a Reference.

"Tell us, before you go, what you think of the official tactics in the Cunningham case-the government aid which enabled the criminal to perpetrate the crime, if, in a technical sense, there was any crime."

"It was rather irregular," says Mr. Tinshingle; "an old fellow such as I am looks upon these exploits as Dr. Francis might upon a Homœopathic experimentizer who had nothing to show in support of his practice on a patient except a perfect cure. The success of the thing has nothing to do with its quality as right or wrong, but it demonstrates its necessity and value. So long as we admit the principle in our Detective Police system of dealing with crime on its own plan, we allow and demand precisely this kind of strategy, which is as necessary in the conflict with villainy as in the grander operations of warlike campaigns. The same sort of thing is done constantly on a smaller scale in the ferreting out and exposure of crime. Bear in mind that, in this instance, the crime, so far as intent, which gives it its moral essence, is concerned, was fully ripe, and that the strategy by which it was aided related only to the development and manifestation of the guilty forethought, and did not prevent the criminal at any moment from abandoning the wicked scheme, and stopping short in its execution. I can give you an instance from recollection of a proceeding somewhat analogous, and which, in the time of it, was very notable.

"Nearly forty years ago a man in one of the interior counties of this State was suspected of having forged the signatures and certificate of acknowledgment to a deed conveying a valuable tract of land. The name of the magistrate by whom the certificate of acknowledgment purported to have been signed, was such an exact imitation of his veritable signature that he would have been unable to pronounce

"Spoken like an unsophisticated, ignorant Easy Chair. No! A Receiver owes his first duty to the Fund which has created him. The course of proceedings you suggest would have displayed the grossest incompetency and ingratitude. What! distribute the Fund and put it out of existence? Do you suppose a Receiver guilty of such conduct could look his solicitors in the face, much less a Court of Equity? The duty which the Receiver in this case owed to the Fund was to keep it in Chancery, to resist all the claims made upon it by the creditors, to swell it by attacking the trusts which covered the other property, setting them aside, turning out the trustees, getting possession of the trust moneys, adding them to the Fund, and then keeping the Fund in Court to the end of time. If there were such things as great legal spiders who could spin webs day and night around the Fund, and around the trustees, and around the creditors, and around the Courts, and entangle them all with suits and cross-suits, with bills and cross-it a forgery but for the absence of two dots, which bills, and answers and demurrers, replications and hearings, and decrees and references, and motions and appeals, until the creditors were worried out, and worn out, and badgered, and beggared, and in despair, and begged for mercy, he ought to have set them all at work to protect the Fund. The Court of Appeals ought to have protected it; they ought to have stuck to their old law, and upset all the trusts, and declared all the debts void, and the creditors usurers, and kept the money in the country instead of letting it go back into the Bank of England, or into the pockets of Englishmen to swell the aggregate of British gold. It came out of their pockets originally, you say! To be sure it did, but what of that? The Court should never have looked behind the Fund. It is a monstrous decision; and if you can not see the enormity of it, permit me to say that I should take pleasure in moving to put

he was in the invariable habit of adding to his official signature. The accused was arrested, indicted, and brought to trial. The ablest lawyer in the State, a man unsurpassed, at least, in the management of a criminal defense before a jury, appeared as his counsel. The prosecution was conducted by a more successful competitor for public honors, who was afterward elected President of the United States. The principal witness for the prosecution was the Justice whose signature had been forged. He was positive that the handwriting was not his, but chiefly from the absence of the customary dots. On cross-examination he was obliged to say that it looked like his writing, that if the dots had been there he should have said it was his. The case for the prosecution was evidently a weak one. The prisoner's counsel opened to the jury in very sanguine style. He was prepared to demonstrate the

on the Juras, he seemed to say, "Quiet-be quiet, gentlemen!" And from Geneva, whence he leans over the Savoy heights looking into the lake, he says louder, "Keep quiet!" And when, down by the bridge as you go to the bourg of Chamouni, he stands in the path, he says dreadfully, "Be quiet!" And if you attempt to climb him, and get as far as the Grands Mulets, under his white brow, and feel his breath-how he takes off the edge of your hot haste, and awes you into quietude!

innocence of his client. A witness was in Court | us! In the first, far-away glimpse of him, there who was present when the certificate was signed, and saw the magistrate who had just left the stand sign it with his own hand. The witness was accordingly called, and sworn, but his evidence was like thunder in a clear sky to the Court, the jury, the prisoner, and his counsel-to every body, except the District-Attorney. He stated clearly and distinctly the method by which the crime had been committed, and the time and place of the forgery, and exhibited letters of the prisoner admitting the forgery, and instructing the witness how to testify in order to clear him. The forger had suborned the witness to perjure himself, and the witness had promised to do it; but he was in league with the District-Attorney; his consent to the perjury was to entrap the criminal into fatal confidence, and secure his inevitable conviction. The game was played out, the disclosure came like the flash of retribution, and there was no escape. The prisoner's counsel threw up his brief, and the Court sentenced his client to imprisonment in the State Prison for life. The case was different in some respects," says Tinshingle, "from that of Mrs. Cun-hushed, and sinks, with the mist-wreaths, to the ningham, but the principle is the same."

OUR FOREIGN GOSSIP.

It is coming to that: we knew that it would: we see it by the old, familiar addresses upon the luggage of the Tomkinses, and the Smiths, and the Browns. Switzerland is growing to be a favorite summer resort for those tired of Newport and Saratoga. The Americans are here in bulk; we hear good Frémont caucus speeches in the coffee-rooms of the Geneva hotels, and good Democratic retorts. New York ladies talk of Mayor Wood and Mrs. Cunningham on the eve of a start for Chamouni.

And why not? Why reckon it far, when ten day's steaming (without change of luggage) will put you down on Havre pier, six hours more hustle you to Paris, and twelve more land you on the door-step of mine host of the Hotel des Bergues, in the very jaws of Lake Geneva, and within view of the rosy tip of Mont Blanc ?

Would you believe it that we met Mr. broker, of Wall Street, only yesterday, in a summer duck from Devlin's?

"How d'ye?" said we. "How d'ye?" said he.

"When did you leave New York ?" said we. "Last week" (we met Friday). "Left town for a month, except they telegraph me back!"

There was audacity in leaving Wall Street for a month's run into Switzerland, but what should we say of a count upon the great telegraphic cable before the wire was fairly coiled into the steamer's hold!

There are one or two capital things to know, which fast American travelers, men and women, are apt to learn by a trip hither: First, how small a wardrobe is really necessary for a summer's jaunt; and, next, that a certain degree of repose and quietude of action make the travel of a season far more beguiling.

All the flurry is in the start; after it the fever haste subsides; it finds no sympathy to feed upon; it does not come again till the New York cabmen point their whips at you and bawl in your ear.

And what a delightful escape it is from our universal scramble! What a rebuke the mountains are! How they seem to say: "Time enough, gentlemen; no hurry!" How Mont Blanc tames

Somebody, not long ago, wrote a paper for Blackwood, called "Esthetics among the Alps," intended to be very masterly. What the critics may have said about it we don't know or care. We should be sorry to carry about with us any Alpine teachings derived from such a source. Esthetics among the Alps are like one of Mr. Martin's seven-mile palaces on ten feet of canvas. Esthetics don't belong in the Alps. "Delicate perception" is impertinent where all perceptions are drowned in awe. Esthetics live in a level country, and redeem it. Delicacy of taste has no wing for mountains; it is

valley bottoms. In the Alps, God talks; we tremble, and hold our tongue, and listen.

When you come to Gex-as you will do, if you travel over the Juras, by the loveliest road in the world-you should loiter and pass a night, if you can spare it (always have a night to spare in Switzerland), at Ferney, a miserable little village, where Voltaire lived, and where he cultivated a farm of some nine hundred acres, and built a chateau, which you can enter (with a fee), or see where he slept. Behind the chateau is an overgrown garden and a bowered walk of beech-trees, where he used to lounge, in view of Mont Blanc, and dictated to his secretary. He drove out in a gilt coach, with four horses; and sometimes there were thirty visitors in his chateau, who had come to do him homage, and to enjoy his petulant hospitality. You will see no gilt coach in his village nowadays, but very pretty dun cows, and bare-legged boys driving them through the village streets to the pastures outside the town.

It is a pretty walk of five miles from Ferney into Geneva. Hedges skirt the road, and there are scattered country-houses, which remind one of England. There are orchards, and open meadows; and, to the left, from time to time, views of the lake and of the mountains beyond.

When you have entered the town, given up your passport to a Genevese policeman in a cocked hat, and are fairly in the streets, you will be disappointed. You might be in a dirty part of Baltimore; but presently you will come upon a quay which borders the Rhone, and see another town, as it were, rise like an amphitheatre before you, and bridges over which crowds of people are hurrying; and the river-water you will find of such a rich, deep, intense blue as will startle you, and make you think, perhaps, your eyes are at fault. You try them by looking up at a green mountain shoulder which backs the town, and bow them again, lovingly, to that wonderful water.

There is a great ark of baths floating near by, and we enter to wash off the dust of our foot-tramp. After this, what refreshment as, from the window of our hotel upon the edge of the lake, we look over the river and the town, and listen to the hum, and see the bronze Rousseau standing among the trees upon an island garden, and catch the murmur of