voltiger in ground and lofty tumbling; and, hurrying on my clothing, in ten minutes was discussing a bowl of cafe at Madame Coiffaird's. I did not care to stop at Mrs Cater's, and take vinegar in my slops, so indulged myself in the luxury of bona fide coffee, and a bit of rusk, at Madame's. While there, I received, accidentally, the agreeable intelligence, that, during the day following, I might expect my dearly beloved help-meet, with her dearly beloved trio of pledges, and her sister and niece. (Parenthesis-My wife, God bless her, is very economical, and the thought of a hotel creates a spasmodic contraction of her pursestrings.) Here was a fix. A man without the appenda of wife and little ones, may run and eat, he may breakfast at the Exchange, dine at the Tremont, sup at Fenno's, and sleep-in the watch-house, if he likes ; but with a wife and the little Peregrinates, such peregrination were out of the question.

I have shinned during the last half hour of the last bank hour of the last day of grace,—I have run myself to a shadow, like a tallow candle, at 100 deg. Fahrenheit, to be in time for the steamboat,—I have run away from a footpad, dodged a highwayman, bilked a Charlie, and swam for dear life,-but all the affliction, the perspiration, the provocation and anxiety of all my other trials combined, never equalled in amount of suffering, what I endured while looking for quarters for My sister, and my sister's child,

My wife, and children three.

I took up a daily, and thought myself the most fortunate man in the world, when I found an advertisement in which it was stated that "boarders could be accommodated in a central situation." Fearful lest some one

should slip in between me and my boarding-house, of which I had already in imagination taken possession, I hurried to "enquire of the printer." The accommodations were chambers in the lower part of Milk Street -a delightful situation for a residence, and quiet withal, as loads of Russia iron, rattling of trucks, squeaking of blocks and tackles, the yo-heave-ho of sailors, and the conversation of the "finest pisantry in the world" can make it. I need not tell the reader that I did not trouble the landlady to show me the premises. Other newspaper boarding-houses were equally eligible places. Some required the thread with which Theseus guided Ariadne out of the Cretan Labyrinth, to find themothers were too easily found, as they were in the noisiest thoroughfares in the city-some had no water, and others a cellar full-some had no air, and others an abundance of the worst air in the world. One obliging lady wished me to furnish her parlor, and pay the rent, allowing her the privilege of turning me out of it when her countrycousins visited her, i. e. four days in the week, exclusive of Sundays. One family served up brick-dust and bran, on the Graham principle, and another had eleven chil dren, which, with the little Peregrinates, would have made an aggregate of three fourths of a score.

"Oh Mrs Cater!" I unconsciously exclaimed, "Oh Mrs Cater, would I had borne with you longer! Your worst faults were virtues, and the miseries of your establishment, tender mercies, in comparison with what I have this day seen in other places!" At that moment "Rooms to Let," pasted in the window of a very neat house, caught my eye. To spring to the door was the work of an instant, to pull the bell the work of another. The parlor was spacious-neat; the air of the cham

bers was close, and I opened a window. "Whew-ew!" I whistled, and abstracted my linen-cambric from my coat-pocket. "It's nothing but a soap and candle factory," said my conductress. When I reached the street, I was in a perspiration. The lower rooms in another house were very well-the upper rooms, upper rooms indeed. I don't like to waste too much of my life upon staircases.

At one place the doors were closed, and the lights out at half past nine-at another it was never shut during the night, longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Fifteen night-keys, in the pockets of fifteen gentlemenboarders, kept it on the swing from the going down, even unto the rising of the sun. But to discourse longer of my trials would weary the If any doubt, let him try the rounds. To conclude, I have at length found excellent quarters, and having become domiciled again, no slight cause shall induce me to vacate them.

patience of the reader.

TO AVOID BOMBAST.

NEVER fancy a subject too lofty for language-and never have two styles of conversation, one for the eye, and another for the ear. Do not attempt to describe what you do not feel-and if you feel what you cannot describe, say nothing about it.

OLD KIT AND HIS DAUGHTERS.

There is no flesh in his obdurate heart.

THIS quotation, like most quotations, will not bear a literal application. I have no doubt that when Kit Meanwell dies, (Christopher Meanwell, Gentleman, is his title in legal instruments,) if a post mortem is had, there will be found a heart of flesh, but of the consistence and impenetrability of jerked beef. He does not intend to be cruel or unfeeling, and does not know that he can be reproached as such a person. Devoid of delicacy and sensibility, he makes no allowance for such weaknesses in the character of others, and the mere mention of them calls from him a damnatory expressio of doubt, and an anathema upon those who enter a plea so effeminate. He can understand a complaint of frozen ears or fingers, when he knows the thermometer ranges ten to fifteen degrees below zero-but laughs at the opinion sometimes expressed, that a cold demeanor to a dependant, or unfortunate, though it accompany a favor, freezes the current of gratitude in the bosom of the recipient.

'His wife, good woman, is a descendant of the Puritans, and so, indeed, is Kit himself. Between every man and wife there is a difference, and that which particularly exists between Christopher and his help-meet, consists in this that she, from her puritán progenitors, inherits all their pious horror of language garnished with profane adjectives, and other parts of speech; while the vernacular tongue of an unmentionable place, set to

music, and performed by a demoniac choir, with an appropriate orchestral accompaniment, would not affect or affright Kit a hair. Therefore, he will not in her presence abate one iota of his hot vocabulary, though she assures him that his profanity is a constant source of poignant grief to her. He does not believe her, because he never felt pain of this description-and it would be as impossible to convince him she is in earnest, as to persuade the emperor of Japan, that, at certain seasons of the year, the waters of our New England rivers will support an elephant on their surface. He is not at all insensible to her corporeal suffering-never strikes her, or plants his boots upon her corns-intentionally. He has been known, like the hero of Sterne's " Good Warm Watchcoat," to travel the village in search of a styptic for his wife's bleeding finger, and return with his pockets full of cobwebs. He has been known to delay his breakfast three quarters of an hour, while the faculty were in consultation on the case of his wife, when she laid at death's door; and he has also put up with cold dinners three days in the week, when the attention of the factotum who officiated as "help," was divided between the kitchen and the sick-chamber. He waits upon his wife on all public occasions, which perhaps occur once in a couple of months, and she waits upon him, upon other of the three hundred and sixty-five days in

every

the year.

Christopher has a couple of daughters-they are fair to look upon, but are sad vixens, each in her way. As in all families where the man and wife are two, the children are equally divided. Eliza, the romping junior sister, is her father's pet, and Helen, the mathematically precise and correct daughter, sides with her mother.