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mine. Welcome, most rubicund1 sir! You and I have been great strangers hitherto; nor, to express the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam in the miniature Tophet" which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavour of cold water. Good-bye; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply at the old stand.

Who next? Oh, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the stones that I expect he is afraid of breaking them. What he limps by without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars. Well, well, sir: no harm done, I hope! Go, draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind-legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?

ON HIS OWN HISTORY.

Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my

good friends; and while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strown earth, in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear, and deemed as precious, as liquid diamonds. The Indian Sagamores drank of it from time immemorial, till the fearful deluge of fire-water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. For many years after the white man came to settle here it was the watering-place, and as it were the wash-bowl of the vicinity, whither all decent folks resorted, to purify their visages and gaze at them afterwards—at least the pretty maidens did-in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here, and placed it on the communion table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after another was consecrated to heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides, and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of their waters, now their grave. But, in the course of time, a town pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring; and when the first decayed another took its place-and then another, and still another-till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my own goblet. Drink and be refreshed! The water is pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red Sagamore beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones,

where no shadow falls but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as the wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued since your fathers' days, be recognised by all.

Your pardon, good people; I must interrupt my stream of eloquence and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper. But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty, if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good, The better you think of me, the better men and women will you find yourselves.

IN PRAISE of Water.

I shall say nothing of my all important aid on washing days; though, on that account alone, I might call myself the household god of a hundred families. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bells made you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the Town Pump, and found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all

the nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so, since the days of Hippocrates. 10 Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence on mankind.

No; these are trifles compared with the merits which wise men concede to me-if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class-of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water! The Town Pump and the Cow! Such is the glorious co-partnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, and finally monopolise the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel sufficiently wretched for her squalid form to find shelter. Then disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now the frenzy of hereditary11 fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled in every generation by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war-the drunkenness of nations-perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy-a calm bliss of temperate affections-shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

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"Firewater.-A name applied by the Red Indians to gin and other spiri s first sold to them by the white traders.

Midnight bells. The fire-alarm

bells in the middle of the night.
"Medical diploma. A certificate
authorizing the holder to practise as a
medical man.

10

Hippocrates.-The most celebrated physician of ancient times. He was born about B.C. 460, and died at the age of 104: Hereditary fever. The feverish thirst which leads to drunkenness is thought to be hereditary—that is, to descend from father to son.

I HAE NAEBODY NOW.

I HAE naebody now-I hae naebody now,
To meet me upon the green,

Wi' her light locks waving o'er her brow,
And joy in her deep blue een;

Wi' the saft sweet kiss, an' the happy smile,
An' the dance of the lightsome fay,
An' the wee-bit tale of news the while
That had happen'd when I was away.

I hae naebody now-I hae naebody now,
To clasp at my bosom at even;
O'er her calm sleep to breathe the vow,
An' pray for a blessing from Heaven;
An' the wild embrace, an' the gleesome face,
In the morning that met mine eye :
Where are they now? Where are they now?
In the cauld, cauld grave they lie.

There's naebody kens-there's naebody kens,
An' O may they never prove,

That sharpest degree of agony

For the child of their earthly love!

To see a flower in its vernal hour

By slow degrees decay;

Then softly aneath in the arms of death
Breathe its sweet soul away.

O dinna break, my poor auld heart,
Nor at thy loss repine;

For the unseen hand that threw the dart
Was sent from her Father and thine.

Yes, I maun mourn, an' I will mourn,
Even till my latest day;

But though my darling can never return
I shall follow her soon away.

JAMES HOGG.

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