polished shoes, only soiled by recent dust, denoted him a pedestrian. He supported both hands on his silver mounted cane, and his eyes were fixed on his young companion. “You appeared to be interested in the scene that has just passed. Do you know any of the sportive gentlemen who have been playing such strange gambols ?”

"I know them all. I am one of the party."

"But you have not joined in their frolicsome foolery."

Perhaps because I did not partake of the exciting cause." "I understand," was the stranger's brief reply.

Spiffard was pleased with both the appearance and the address of the senior, whose manner, and a something independent of dress, indicated good breeding and philanthropy, mingled with eccentricity. Is it too much to say that all this may be seen at a glance? If not seen, it may be imagined. Imagination is rapid in conclusions.

This person had walked into the horse-shed, and seated himself, while Spiffard's attention had been so occupied that he was unconscious of his approach. The old gentleman had marked both the scene, and the absorbing interest the young man took in it.

There was a pause in the conversation of these chance-connected and dissimilar interlocutors, during which, Spiffard took note of the figure, dress, and attitude of the person to whom he felt himself attracted by something stronger than mere curiosity. In his sitting posture, the tall, thin person of the stranger was supported, as he bent forward, by a cane, with a plain round silver head, on which both hands, ungloved, rested, and a mourning ring was displayed upon a finger of one. As his head was projected, his gray locks, not time-thinned, fell on either side of a face, pale, and marked by the furrows of at least fifty years. His eyes were black as jet, and as brilliant as the most vigorous intellect, or the most robust health and youth could display. They were piercing; but the bland tranquillity of the surrounding features prevented the appearance of severity. "You are one of the party," said the stranger ; "but you give as a reason for not joining in their antics, that you had not partaken of the exciting cause; that is, as I understand-"

"Is it possible!"

Here followed another pause. The old man seemed sur

prised. He repeated his last words several times, in a low tone, as to himself.

The reader must recollect that I record events of five and

twenty years ago. There were then no temperance societies. Gentlemen-yes, gentlemen, did not think themselves degraded by drunkenness.

At length the stranger resumed, "You dislike wine or spirituous liquors, perhaps?"

"No, on the contrary, I remember, as a child, being delighted by the taste, and eagerly desiring wine."

"And you deny yourself the gratification! Why?"

"I have seen the misery caused by indulgence."

"Have you, so young, seen enough to produce such a resolution; such a determined abstinence? If you had seen what I have seen-felt what I have felt! you would curse the poison that scatters shame and sorrow among so many victims of intemperance, and their unhappy relatives!"

The colour had rushed to the old man's cheeks, and his eyes, before bright, now shone with a brilliancy almost supernatural.

If I have made myself understood in the previous delineation of Spiffard's character, and the circumstances which had formed it, I need not say that the words and locks of the stranger had on him the effect of magic. Those chords of the memory, feeling, imagination, which, too strongly tcuched, tended to intellectual derangement, were violently assailed. His excitement rose with the old man's voice, and the fire of his eyes maddened him. “ My curses join with yours; I have seen and felt all you speak of."

"Oh, no! you have not looked on a face beloved, and seen it distorted."

"I have !"

"You have not seen one justly beloved, flying from the proud eminence his virtues had gained; the beloved shepherd of a Christian flock driven to despondency by admitting doubts; a despondency, the result of severe application upon a delicate frame; doubts, the effects of disease; and beheld the victim of overstrained, research seeking a refuge from doubt in certain destruction, until his only asylum was in a mad-house!"

Spiffard's feelings had so long been pushed beyond the healthful medium, that his monomaniacal propensities had gained full power over him. The images of his father and mother rushed before his imagination so vividly, that he appeared to see them with his bodily eyes; and the form and

lineaments of the latter were strangely commingled with those of his own wife: he uttered an exclamation that attracted the attention of the old gentleman, and his feelings were no longer absorbed in self.

Admiration, produced by the conduct of a youth who appeared so strongly to sympathize with him in a sorrow happily not common, took possession of the stranger, and changed his expressive countenance from its wildness, to a softer and calmer appearance. His voice faltered as he attempted to utter words intended to soothe the agitation he had so unaccountably caused. At this moment the noisy bacchanalian rout issued from the house, and the imaginary gave place to reality. The shades of evening were closing in. Carriages and saddled horses were brought to the door, and several voices shouted "Spiffard! Skulker! Where are you? Where is the waterdrinker?"

in

Cooke insisted upon having his pedestrian companion as an attendant in the carriage into which he was lifted; for now, consequence of the additional cups taken in token of reconciliation with his late antagonist, (who had miraculously recovered from his mortal wound,) and a parting glass, or stirrup-cup, drank with Cato, who had been dubbed Emperor of Morocco, and king of Utopia, instead of Utica, he could no longer obtain command over any member but his tongue, which incessantly demanded Spiffard.

But Spiffard had, for the present, a stronger attraction in the aged stranger; who, refusing to take a place in one of the hacks had turned his steps to the road, as if determining to walk to the city.

The young man resolved not to leave him, and seeing that his former pedestrian companion was safely stowed in a carriage with one of the youngest of the revellers, who promised to deposite him at his lodgings and with trusty Trustworthy, the water drinker followed his new-made acquaintance, and soon overtook him, although he was walking with strides and vigour unpromised by his grey hairs and attenuated form.

Joining the old gentleman, Spiffard asked permission to accompany him, which was readily granted, with an expression of gratification that one so young should prefer walking with him to the easier mode of accomplishing the journey. There was a sympathetic attraction felt by these two dissimilar individuals not commonly experienced by two of the male sex at first sight.

"You pay me a compliment by preferring my company to that of your friends.”

After a silence of a moment, Spiffard ejaculated, “friends.” Perhaps companions would have been a more suitable

66

word."

"For most of them, sir: but there are some even in that riotous company, who, I have reason to believe, are my friends."

"Not any engaged in the farce of the duel?"

66

Yes, both the principal actors in that farce; one intended by the authors as the butt-even the long-erring eccentric George Frederick Cooke: the other, the frank and liberal minded Cooper."

66

"Can such a man as Mr. Cooke be the friend of any one?" Yes, sir, if that one has shown an interest in his welfare that could not be suspected to arise from selfishness. 1 may be mistaken; but I think he is attached to me because I have opposed his mad career, and have rejected firmly his excuses while I endeavored to strengthen his (hitherto fruitless) resolves to amend, and to give effect to his penitence. O, how truly, in one of his comedies, Holcroft has called repentance a sneaking, snivelling fellow, when not accompanied by amendment. I don't quote his words."

"The words of a play are seldom worth quoting."

"The words of truth are as acceptable from a play as from a homily-from a stage as from a pulpit-falsehood is always detestable and truth always to be reverenced."

"I spoke hastily-I was occupied by my feelings respecting that grey-haired actor whose folly I had been witnessing. I felt that plays were worthless, viewing the conduct of players. I was wrong."

You

"You do injustice now to players, as then to plays. forget that men of every profession play the fool. Even in the fools-play which you have witnessed, and which boys might be ashamed of, there were only two players to ten men of other denominations; men with more fixed occupations and connexions; more generally esteemed in society; but all as eager in the childish game and as deeply involved in the guilt of intemperance, as the man you stigmatize as the grey-haired-actor."

"Folly is doubly despicable connected with grey hairs." "True, sir, but not more in an actor than in a merchant, physician or lawyer."

"Your remark is just. But you have excited my curiosity. What could have induced one so young and so firmly attached

to habits of temperance, to seek the company of an old inveterate, irreclaimable debauchee?"

"Old, inveterate, but perhaps not irreclaimable. While life remains, there is hope. We do not despair of returning reason for the lunatic or the maniac."

"True,

true,-thank God! thank God!"

The pedestrians were by this time walking in that imperfect, though oft times pleasant, light, which the stars alone shed over an American landscape in autumn; and Spiffard did not observe the change his words had produced upon his companion; the convulsive expression of feature with which he uttered the few last words.

"Such being the nature of man," the youth proceeded, "and the power of truth, persuasively employed, being great beyond our knowledge, surely we ought not to abandon as irreclaimable any of our fellow-creatures who are not permanently deprived of reason. Mr. Cooke has a powerful mind, and although perverted and debased by the second nature of habit, perhaps the inclinations implanted in the first, may be restored, and the patient saved. I am influenced by motives flowing from circumstances touching me nearly, as has been already hinted."

"Yes!" said the old man. "Yes, I can understand. You have witnessed the mental alienation of some one dear to you. You are a stranger to me, and I have already spoken to you as men of the world do not often speak to strangers, but it is evident that we, however dissimilar in other respects, are alike suf ferers from the same cause, and that is a source of sympathy with minds under the governance of reason. The loss of rea

son in one dear to me has caused the greatest suffering I have ever experienced. I have to-day, within a few hours, witnessed his deplorable condition; and seeing, as I did in your presence, such voluntary relinquishment of the greatest blessing bestowed on man, I lose my self-command, and utter that which had better, perhaps, have been locked in the breast, and guarded with close lips."

There was a long pause in the colloquy of the two pedestrians. We will not continue to report in detail any more of the conversation touching this subject. Our hero's return walk from Cato's was a perfect contrast to that which carried him thither. His companion was equally an opposite, in all but age, and in an alacrity for walking. The old gentleman was an habitual pedestrian, and could talk, although walking at a good round pace. His feelings had been excited