wife, out started the two groomsmen and several volunteers with buckets, pitchers, and cups, to molify the drinking part of the serenaders. But when the customary doses were administered, not only did the musicians not retire with the complimentary cheers, but remained and calling for "big-bug wine-fit for gentlemen!" and letting off at each repetition of the demand peals of shiver-ree; till finding after all no wine forthcoming, they manifested symptoms of more serious riot and abuse.

This awakened an angry spirit in the bridal party, and threats from without were answered by menace from within, while inquiries were made of our host what arms could be furnished for the defence of the castle. At this instant a window sash behind the Miss Ladybooks was cautiously raised from without, and before I could step thither to hold down the sash, in leaped a musician-a four footed swine, some six months of age, and weighing some fifty pounds! Master Grunter had evidently entered unwillingly and although in his descent he availed himself of one lady's shoulder, and another's lap, he trod elastically as an essenced exquisite, and scarcely deranged a collar or soiled a frock!

The feat was cheered by piggy's associates; and the more, as our ladies in avoiding the unclean gentleman, had sprung upon chairs, sofas, and even tables, where their alarmed countenances were visible above the curtains to the bipedalic hogs without. Young Squeal, however, behaved himself just like a pig in a parlour--he sneaked with a tight-twisted tail and a vulgar grunt under the grand bridal sofa: and thence, I forget how, he was unceremoniously turned out among his former friends, where he felt himself more at home.

Virginia and Kentucky blood was now approaching the boiling point; and a rush was made by some of us towards the door but there Dr. Sylvan had, with great wisdom,

already taken post to prevent if possible, either ingress or Still the door could not be kept wholly closed; egress. and we thus caught glimpses of performers mounted on the backs of performers-the super-human ones being large four-footed hogs, which were held on human backs, by their front legs, advanced hugging fashion, each side a human neck! As the rational creatures capered up and down with their riders, those irrational ones, in terror and fierce indignation, were sending forth those long, woful, keen, nerve-shaking appeals for release, that we in simplicity had till now imagined masterly imitations of some squeaking even better than piggy himself! Nothing like the true hog after all!

Meanwhile, two thus doing piggy-back in reverse order, had gradually advanced to the door; when the horse-pig essayed to force a wider aperture, intending to incline forward and thus allow the mounted animal to leap into the entry, and thence into the dining room to upset and demolish the table with its goodies and silver. But no sooner had the hog-ridden serenader thrust his hand into the aperture than Dr. S. aided by Harwood, forced the door against the member, and so held the gentleman that he cried out not wholly unlike Mr. Snout but a moment before on his back, yet now let fall! It is wonderful how hard a fellow can pull when his hand is thus caught! Why, spite of all the force against him, he did jerk his hand out-and left nothing behind except the skin of a thumb with a nail attached!-a scalp for the victors!

At the instant word came to the author, that his darling little girl had gone into fits from fright! And when I beheld the blood gushing from her nose, and her face pale and death-like-* *-yes, I rushed out bare-headed and weaponless, followed by a few bold friends with lights, Dr. S. having left the door to attend to the babe! Our design was to catch some in the act of riot, and make them answer

at a legal tribunal. Aware of this, the rabble fled as our lights advanced: but soon rallying in a dark corner, they began to salute us with groans, hisses and stones--and then rose the cry, "Knock 'em down!-drag the big-bug yankees through the creek!" And so our situation was momentarily becoming more and more critical, when a well-known voice thus arose in our behalf :

“Bust my rifle !-if I'm goin to stand by and see that ither, I say, or my name's not Ned Stanley-no! no! I tell'd you to put off a hour ago, when me and Domore kim up, arter they give us the fust dram. Them folks ain't to my idee, no how, but they've got rites as well as the best on us—and I ain't agoin for to see 'em trampled on no furthur no how. I say Bob Carltin's a powerful clever feller, arter all, albeit he's thick with big-bugs-and, bust my rifle, if any man knocks him down to-night, or drags him in the water, till he tries hisself fust on Ned Stanley !"

"Them's my idees, Ned,"-responded the well known voice of Domore," and it tain't us Woodill fellers no how, what's carried it so fur-its them darn'd blasted chaps from the Licks and Nobs. And I'm not goin ither to go agin a man what was with us in Bill's cave-and if that leetle gal a hissin is gone in a fit, I'm most powerful teetotal sorry I had any thing to do with the fun any how. Come, come, darn my leggins, let's make ourselves skerse -come, fellers, let's be off!"”

Mobs, like other flocks and herds, follow their leaders by instinct. After all Virgil's poetical great man's power to smoothe down popular swells, this night showed he could have done nothing that way in the Purchase.* For though the grave and reverend Clarence was with us, no subsidence in the boiling sea was visible, till Ned and Domore

* Unless he had a cart whip like a priest-and drove tame jackasses ---ours were wild ones.

rose in their majesty; and while two or more schoolmasters were abroad in the land that night, the quelling of riot and preventing of violence and bloodshed, was by radical leaders destitute of learning and gravity, but full of courage, manly feeling and muscular power!

Man may be known from books, but men and boys are different matters; and the phases of the genus Homo in the Purchase were then different from the phases elsewhere. Even a genuine Hoosier mob is totally unlike a scum mob in an Atlantic city: generosity may be found in the former, none in the latter. The first loves rather the fun, the latter, the plunder and blood, of a riot. Fear of the military scatters the city mob, an appeal to manliness disperses the Hoosier one.

Our retreat was left, of course, unimpeded; nor was the annoyance renewed. Yet the spirit of frolic was up; and aided by the spirit of the still. Hence, away rolled the tumult to the forest; where the prowling panther and other denizens of the lairs, were appalled by a tempest of sounds, such as never before had disturbed the solemnities of the grand old shades. And the orgies of the drunken-god were celebrated as in primitive times, when Orpheus was hired to lead home the raving wives and daughters of his

townsmen.

Next day, Dr. Sylvan and others dreading future results of the Shiver-ree made inquisition for leading rioters. None, of course, could be identified, save the man without the thumb-skin; and he, taking the alarm, became " so skerse" as never again to be seen in Woodville. For a while, therefore, the Shiver-ree was disused; but /by degrees it was again introduced, and when we left the Purchase it was there as popular and noisy as ever.

CHAPTER LVI.

SIXTH YEAR.

"MAR. Alas my lord I have but killed a Fly!
TIT. But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air?

Poor harmless fly!

That with his pretty buzzing melody,

Came here to make us merry-And thou hast killed him!"

By a recent charter of our college, it was appointed that the Faculty should oversee the Students; the Trustees, oversee the Faculty; the Board of Visitors, the Trustees; and the Legislature the Visitors ;-the people in general engaging to oversee the Legislature, and the people of Woodville, the entire whole! The cause of education was, then, well overseen! And yet our circle was as vicious as that of the Church Militant and Insultant; which keeps its antagonist foundations in perpetual somerset-top and bottom being always at bottom and top-and yet so circumferential as to be alike destitute of top or bottom, or bottom or top-and bound by its infallibility to roll on for ever in its absurdities!

And now was to be found the rara avis-the white crow a good President. Distant and learned gentlemen had answered our first inquiries, by an earnest recommendation of Mr. Clarence; but so widely did that personage differ in opinion, that he suppressed a letter written to himself urging him by all means to be a candidate. He plead his youth; and his wish to remain in a subordinate post to perfect himself in his favourite studies,-languages, history,