hand half way in its upward flight, the pinch downward yet at the tips of the finger and the thumb, he would for the last time look with an interesting smile into his friend's face, and in the midst of that gay sunshine, suddenly turning the pinch under his own olfactory organ, he would inhale the perfume with the most musical sniffle imaginable! Retrograde motions and curves of becoming solemnity, amplitude and grace, would close the box and restore it to the inner vest-and so Mr. Cuts well would have snuffed!

Impatient folks may think it takes long to describe a pinch; but, then, it took still longer to perform one.

Mr. Cutswell, among other matters, was no mean performer on the violin; and on one occasion, at a private concert at my house, forgetting his usual caution, he entertained me with an anecdote about his fiddle and his Bishop. For be it known, that like other politicians, Mr. C. was a theoretical member of a religious people, who looked on fiddle-playing as on the sin of witchcraft—although I do not know whether he had ever received the rite of confirmation; yet nothing but his high standing saved him from an excommunication, that out there would speedily have been visited on a poor player. Still his Bishop was a faithful shepherd's dog, and hesitated not to growl and bark, if he did to bite; being, also, one who prayed for men sometimes by name, and at them often by description. And so he contrived once to pray at Mr. Cuts well's fiddling or rather against his fiddle; and nothing could ever so belittle that instrument as this preacher's periphrastic abuse of that curious compound of catgut, rosin, and horsehair.

"I was present," said Mr. Cuts well, laying down his fiddle and bow upon our piano.-" some few evenings since, after the discharge of my legal duties at the court house-(attitude commencing for taking snuff,)-present, Mr. Carlton, in the prayer-room of our chapel, a large con

course of members being congregated for the customary weekly devotions." (snuff box out.) "Among others in the apartment, was our venerable Bishop." (Box tapped and opened.) "He is a good and worthy man, sir; but sub rosâ not wholly exempt from prejudice. Indeed, as to music generally, but more especially that of the violin,(finger and thumb pouncing)-he entertains the most erroneous sentiments ;-(pinch going upwards)—and I fear that he regards both myself and my instrument with feelings of acerbity." (Hem!-pinch inhaled.) In the course of his prayer this evening, he contrived to administer to myself in particular ;-(lid closing)—but also to you, Mr. Carlton and all other gentlemen that handle the bow,--(box "being" returned) the following very severe and appropriate admonition, and in the exact words I now quote :

"Oh! Lord! oh!-I beseech thee to have marsy on all them there poor sinners what plays on that instrumint, whose sounds is like the dying screech of that there animal out of whose intrils its strings is made!"" Amen!--at a venture! (Pompey or Cæsar.)

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
Perpetual sober gods! I do proclaim

One honest man-mistake me not-but one."
"What find I here ?

Fair Portia's counterfeit ? what demi-god
Hath come so near creation ?"

THIS chapter is devoted to a man ;--Mr. Vulcanus Allheart. And, although he will rap our knuckles for smiling at a few smileable things in him, Mr. Allheart will not be displeased to see that Mr. Carlton, the author, remembers

his friend, as Mr. Carlton the storekeeper and tanner, always said he would, when we blew his bellows for him or fired rifles together.

During a life somewhat peculiarly chequered, we have both by land and sea been more or less intimate with excellent persons in the learned professions, and in the commercial, agricultural and mechanical classes; but never out of the circle of kinsfolk, including the agnati and the cognati, have I ever so esteemed, ay, so loved any one as Vulcanus Allheart. And who and what was he?

He was by birth a Virginian, by trade a blacksmith, by nature a gentleman, and by grace a Christian; if more need be said, he was a genius. Ay! for his sake to this hour I love the very sight and smell of a blacksmith's shop; and, many a time in passing one, do I pause and steal a glance towards the anvil, vainly striving to make some sooty hammerer there assume the form and look of my lame friend-for he was lame from a wound in his thigh received in early life. Oh! how more than willing would I stand once more and blow his bellows to help him gain time for an evening's hunt, could I but see anew that honest charcoal face and that noble soul speaking from those eyes, as he rested a moment to talk till his iron arrived at the proper heat and colour!

But let none suppose Vulcanus Allheart was a common blacksmith. He was master both of the science and the art, from the nailing of a horse-shoe up to the making of an axe; and to do either right, and specially the latter, is a rare attainment. Not one in a million could make an axe as Allheart made it; and hence in a wooden country, where life, civilization, and Christianity itself, are so dependent on the axe, my blacksmith was truly a jewel of a man. His axes, even where silver was hoarded as a miser's gold, brought, in real cash, one dollar beyond any patent flashy affairs from New England, done up in pine

boxes and painted half black, while their edge-part was polished and shiney as a new razor-and like that article, made not to shave but to sell; and all this his axes commanded, spite of the universal nation, all-powerful and tricky as it is. No man in the Union could temper steel as my friend tempered; and workmen from Birmingham and Sheffield, who sometimes wandered to us from the world beyond the ocean, were amazed to find a man in the Pur. chase that knew and practised their own secrets.

Necessity led him to attempt one thing and another out of his line, till, to accommodate neighbours, (and any man was his neighbour) he made sickles, locks and keys, augurs, adzes, chisels, planes, in short, any thing for making which are used iron and steel. His fame consequently extended gradually over the West two hundred miles at least in any direction; for from that distance came people to have well done at Woodville, what otherwise must have been done, or a sort of done, at Pittsburgh. Nay, liberal offers were made to Allheart to induce him to remove to Pittsburgh; but he loved us too much to accept them; and beside, he was daily becoming richer, having made a very remarkable discovery, which, however, he used to impart to others for a consideration-viz. he had found out the curious art of beating iron into gold. My friend was indeed Lyon" of the West.*

the great "

Mr. Allheart's skill was great also in rifle-making, and also naturally enough in rifle-shooting. I have compared Pittsburgh and Eastern and Down-eastern rifles with his, (for the one concealed in my chamber is a present from Allheart,) but none are so true, and none have sights that will permit the drawing of a bead so smooth and round. Does

* It is hoped all the "Lyon's" friends of Philadelphia will patronize this book.

any maker doubt this? Grant me three months to regain my former skill, and I stake my rifle against all you have on hand, that she beats the things, one and all, eighty-five yards off hand-or (as I shall only give back your articles) I'll try you for the fun and glory alone! By the way, do you shoot with both eyes open? If not, let me commend the practice, both from its superiority and because it may save you from killing your own wife, as it did Mr. Allheart

once.

He excelled, we have intimated, as a marksman. Perhaps in horizontal shooting he could not have a superior; for in his hands the rifle was motionless as if screwed in one of his vices; and thence would deliver ball after ball at fifty, sixty, or seventy yards, into one and the same augur hole. For him missing was even difficult; and all I had ever heard of splitting bullets on the edge of axe or knife, hitting tenpenny nails on the head, and so forth, was accomplished by Allheart. And his sight had become like that of the lynx; for at the crack of the gun he would himself call out where the ball had struck. Nor is all this so wonderful if we recollect that many years in proving rifles he practised daily; indeed target shooting was a branch of his business-and in it his skill became rare, ay! even bewitching!

His place for making these daily trials was at first a large stump some seventy yards distant on the far side of a hollow, against which stump was fixed his target; and along that ravine his wife, a pretty young woman, used to pass and repass to get water from a spring at the lower end. Her almost miraculous escape in that ravine I shall give in Mr. Allheart's own words, although his idiom was slightly inaccurate and provincial.

"You say, why can't we shoot across the holler agin that ole walnut stump yander? I ain't pinted a rifle across thare for four year-and never intend to no more."