HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Mar. 7, 194! Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1860, BY MUNSELL & ROWLAND, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York. The glancing eye must never stray; The cheek for one alone must glow; That citadel of chastity. The lip must harvest all its dew For one (as mine does its for you). Those swinging tresses-leaflets of the brain Tho' kissed by transient winds, dare not kiss back, again: AS IT IS. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. JACK STERLING was literally wedged in, on the left end of the front seat of an old fashioned stage coach, with three hundred pounds of human flesh in the shape of a fellow-traveler leaning against him and almost crushing him at every dash of the huge wagon as it rolled over the irregular road. It was night, and Sterling did not know what sort of people surrounded him. As usual, there were several gabby individuals in the crowd, who kept up at intervals a running conversation, which served the double purpose of annoying the sleepy, and of advertising the speakers. Here were merchants, traders and politicians. One gentleman made himself a lion by letting every body know that he lived on Wall street. This person had excited the curiosity of Sterling, who recognized him, next morning, by his voice, observing some peculiarities in his manners and conversation. He had the habit of letting his hands rest half way in his breeches pockets, with the thumbs out, continuously and gently rubbing the doe-skin, so that his pants, in the region of his pockets, had come to be quite thread-bare. This is a broker, and as he is to figure hereafter, in these pages, the reader will excuse us for having gone a little ahead of time, in our narrative, to see this individual in daylight. We will now leave him as he is at this moment leaning over a tin basin, washing the inveterate sand out of his eyes. If the reader will be good enough now, to return with us to the left end of the front seat of the coach, he will observe in the corner, jammed in as aforesaid, a very thin, tall man, with his cloak wrapped over his traveling cap, and his head resting against the side-curtain, sleeping. While our hero was indulging in one of those delicious snatches of sleep called naps, seeing great visions, and looking into the future and the past, through the mysterious telescope of dreams, suddenly there was a terrible crash, and the whole contents of the coach, men, women and children, were hurled, pell-mell, upon him! The wheel at his corner had given way, and the coach had just so far turned over as to put him at the bottom! Sterling, in the struggle, found himself in close contact with a woman, face to face; and his mouth, though in pleasant proximity to a very soft cheek, was severely bruised: it seemed to him, that some |