pocket, betakes himself to flight; for a husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during the season of female rage his authority is superseded, his commission is suspended, and the very scullion who cleans the brasses in the kitchen becomes of more consideration and importance than him.

4. The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are in a few minutes stripped of their furniture; paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie in huddled heaps about the floors; the curtains are torn from their testers, the beds crammed into windows; the chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard; and the gardenfence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, and ragged breeches.

5. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass; for the foreground of the picture, gridirons and frying-pans, rusty shovels, broken tongs, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There a closet has disgorged cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, vials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds, and dried herbs, handfuls of old corks, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters: from the raghole in the garret to the rathole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom was come, and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment.

6. This ceremony completed and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings of every room and closet with brushes dipped in a solution of lime called whitewash, to pour buckets of water over every floor and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with rough brushes wet with soapsuds and dipped in stonecutter's sand. The windows by no means escape the

general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the penthouse, at the risk of her neck; and, with a mug in her hand and a bucket within reach, she dashes away innumerable gallons of water against the glass panes, to the great annoyance of the passengers in the street.

7. I have been told that an action at law was once brought against one of these water nymphs by a person who had a new suit of clothes spoiled by this operation, but after a long argument it was determined by the whole court that the action would not lie, inasmuch as the defendant was in the exercise of a legal right, and not answerable for the consequences; and so the poor gentleman was doubly nonsuited, for he lost both his suit of clothes and his suit at law.

8. The next ceremonial is to cleanse and replace the distracted furniture. The misfortune is that the sole object is to make things clean. It matters not how many useful, ornamental, or valuable articles suffer mutilation or death under the operation: a mahogany chair and a carved frame undergo the same discipline; they are to be made clean at all events, but their preservation is not worthy of attention. An able arithmetician has made an accurate calculation, founded on long experience, and proved that the losses and destructions incident to two whitewashings are equal to one removal, and three removals equal to one fire.

9. This cleansing frolic over, matters begin to resume their pristine appearance. The storm abates; and all would be well again, but it is impossible that so great a convulsion in so small a community should not produce some farther effects. For two or three weeks after the operation the family are usually afflicted with sore throats or sore eyes, occasioned by the caustic quality of the lime,

or with severe colds, from the exhalations of wet floors or damp walls.

10. It must be acknowledged that the ablutions I have mentioned are attended with no small inconvenience; but the women would not be induced, from any consideration, to resign their privilege. Notwithstanding this, I can give you the strongest assurances that the women of America make the most faithful wives and the most attentive mothers in the world; and I am sure you will join me in the opinion that if a married man is made miserable only one week in a whole year he will have no great cause to complain of the matrimonial bond.

DEFINITIONS.—1. Çĕr e mō'ni alş, system of rules. Ap pûr'tenan çeş, things which belong to something else. 2. Prog nos'ties, signs. 3. Scull'jon, kitchen-servant. 4. Těs'ters, top coverings or canopies of beds. 5. Dis gôrged', discharged. 6. Wain'seots, wooden linings on the walls of rooms. Pěnt'house, a shed. 7. Non'suit ed, stopped in a suit at law. 9. Pris'tine, former. Eaus'tie, burning. Ex hala'tions, fumes. 10. Ab lū'tions, washings.

NOTES. This humorous account of a custom among the Americans, entitled "Whitewashing," has been attributed to Dr. Franklin. It appeared in several early editions of Franklin's works, and was thought to be his, from the plainness and characteristic humor of its style. 7. Action would not lie,-that is, there was no cause for a lawsuit.

91.-WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS. GEORGE WASHINGTON was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22, 1732. His education was such as could be obtained at the local schools of the period. Patrick Henry, in speaking of Washington at the first Colonial Assembly, says that "for solid information and sound judgment he was unquestionably the greatest man in the Assembly." The veneration in which the memory of Washington is held by the American people rests chiefly upon his merits as a soldier, statesand patriot; yet as an author the sentiments contained in his last state paper, The Farewell Address, are presented with such ability and clearness as to render it worthy of the most careful study. His life and services are so well known as to require no further notice in this connection. He died December 14, 1799.

man,

1. THE unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence,— the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that from different causes, and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively, though often covertly and insidiously, directed,-it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness, that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

2. To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute: they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former

for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government-the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment—has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government; but the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

3. All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force, to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party,—often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community,-and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.