kind o' music. I'm told they have 'em large down to York, and use 'em in meeten. How'st ?" "Yes, 'tis so, John, they do. But let me get through with my story. After the syren had finished her tune, she began playing with her companion again. Thinks I to myself, 'old speckled skin, I should like to have you in my basket; such a reverend old monarch of the brook is not to be caught every day in the year, What say you for a fresh worm this morning?' So I shortened my rod, and run it behind me, and let the dobber fall upon the water, and float down with the hook to the log where the old fellow and the mermaid was disporting. His love for the lady did not spoil his appetite. He bagged my worm, and then sprung at my float, and cut. I jerked back, and pulled in, and then he broke water and flounced. The mermaid saw that he was in trouble, and dashed at my line, broke it short off, and then took up the trout, and began to disengage the hook from his gills. I had no idea of losing my hook and my trout, besides one of Lentner's best leaders,—that cost me half a dollar,—for any woman, fishy or fleshy, however good a voice she might have. So I broke cover, and came out. The moment she caught a glimpse of me, she screamed and dropped the trout, and ran. Did you every see a deer flash through a thicket? She was gone in an instant "Gone, like the lightning, which o'er head Compelled by an irresistible impulse, I pursued. Down the brook, and through the brake, we went, leaping, and stooping, and turning, and swimming, and splashing, and I, at least a half a dozen times, stumbling and falling. It was but at intervals, as the brook made its longest bends, that I could catch a glimpse of the fugitive nymph, and the last time I put my eager eye upon her, she had stopped and was looking back, with both her hands crossed upon her bosom, panting and apparently exhausted. But as I again broke upon her sight, she started and fled. With fresh ardor I pressed on, calling to her, and beseeching her to stop. I pleaded, promised, threatened, and called the gods to witness that my intentions were honorable, and that I would go and ask her mother first, if she did not live too far off. In the desperation of my entreaties I talked a little Latin to her, that came into my head, apropos, and which was once used by another gentleman,* in a similar case of Parthian courtship;-Parthian !—Yes, that is a correct word, for O! what arrows did the beauty of the flying nymph shoot into my soul! Telling her that she might depend upon my honor, and all that, I continued "At bene si noris, pigeat fugisse; morasque Ipsa tuas damnes, et me retinere labores' that is to say, boys, according to Bishop Heber's translation, "If you knew me, dear girl, I'm sure you'd not fly me; Hold on half an hour, if you doubt, love, and try me.' But, alas! the assurance and the prayer added fresh pinions to her wings. She flew, and despairingly I followed, tearing my hands and face with the merciless brambles that beset my way, until, at last, a sudden turn brought me plump up against the bridge upon the turnpike, in the open fields, and the mermaid was nowhere to be seen. I got up on the railing of the bridge, and sat there weary, wet, and sad. I had lost my fish, left my rod a mile off, and been played the fool with by a mongrel woman. Hook, fish, leader, heart, and mermaid, were all lost to me forever. 'Give me some drink, Titinius,' or Polyphem. to Gal. Ov. Met. 13, 808. Daniel, which I take to be the correct English translation. I feel melancholy and mad to think of it even now." "Scythia est quo mittimur, inquam : Roma relinquenda est: utraque justa mora est." "DID Captain Symmes tell you that himself, sir?" inquired Raynor. "He did,” replied Ned, " and I have not the slightest doubt of the accuracy of his statement. I think I shall publish the account for the benefit of science. Those discoveries concerning the causes and sources of magnetism, and electricity, and galvanism, are really astonishing." "It is strange," said I, like a good, solemn, tiger. "Yes," responded Ned, with graver gravity, "truth is strange, stranger than fiction.” "Can't ye give us some more th' tic'lars, Mr. Locus ?" asked Dan. "Tell us what's the reason 'bout them spots in the sun, and the bony fish all failen last summer. That's what I want to know." 66 No, Dan; I'd rather give you what I know of my own knowledge. Boys, did I ever tell you about my journey to the Lanjan Empire ?" "I never heard you"-" Lan what?"-" Go it !"-" Now for a yarn," and several other interjectional questions and an swers broke, simultaneously, from the lips of the attentive audience. "That's a very interesting country," simpered the tiger. "Won't you take a drink before you start, Mr. Locus ?" "Thank you, thank you, Cypress.-Well, boys-hem!"and Ned got under way as follows: "I had always from my earliest boyhood, a vehement desire to travel and see the world; and whatever other of my studies may have been slighted, I certainly was not neglect. ful of my geography and hydrography. Books of travel, of any sort of respectability and authenticity, I devoured; from Sinbad the Sailor, down to the modernest, pert, self-sufficient affectations of our own expressly deputed readers of guidebooks, and retailers of family gossip. Still, however, I was unsatisfied. I longed to be an actor, not a mere looker on; a doer, not a reader of exploits. In this particular taste, my revered father chose to differ from me, by the distance of several continents. While I sighed for locomotion, and the transmutation of the precious metals into foreign novelties, the dearest care of that respected person was, "T' increase his store, And keep his only son, myself, at home.' "If, in the glow of my imagination, I spoke of Columbia river, Central Africa, Chinese Tartary, Ultima Thule, or any other, reasonable, and desirable region for exploration, the old man would shake his head, and tell me that he was responsible for my future standing in society; and that he could not permit me to go abroad until my habits were formed. Besides, my son,' he would add, ' travelling costs money, and your education is not yet complete, and exchange is up, and stocks are down, and you're rather irregular, and-and you had bet ter wait.' Wait, therefore, I had to, until I had finished my collegiate experiences, and pocketed my alma mater's certificate, that my habits were formed, and that I was a youth distinguished for my learning, brains, and good behavior, and all that; or, as Cypress would say, until the 'hoc tibi trado' of jubilee commencement-day was poured into my ear, and with all becoming and appropriate solemnity, I was consecrated an A. B. My passion for cosmopolitism burned, now, fiercer than ever. I petitioned, and sulked, and flattered, and fretted, and moved earth and heaven, or tried to, "And Heaven,―at last,-granted what my sire denied.' For it pleased heaven to put it into the heads of the navy department, to appoint my uncle, Captain Marinus Locus, Commodore of a relief-squadron that was to go out to the Mediterranean; and about a year after my graduation, the flag-ship Winnipissiago dropped her anchor at the place of rendezvous off the Battery, having on board my excellent, excellent uncle : "My uncle, My father's brother; but no more like my father, He was a jolly old cock, liberal, free-hearted, hated trade, and grace before meals, and though he was a strict disciplinarian aboard ship, he liked an adventure on shore as well as any body, provided only he was sure of not being found out. He was a great admirer of the morality of Lycurgus, inculcated in his precepts for the education of boys, and his darling maxim was, that there was no such thing as abstract sin, and that the iniquity of iniquity consisted in the bad example. During the time of his waiting for the rest of the squadron, he was often at my father's house, and I had frequent opportunities for the enjoyment of his conversation. It is not to |