to work at the press, unless the office was so much hurried that his services in that department could not be dispensed with. He had had a little difficulty with his leg, and press work rather hurt him than otherwise. The bargain included the condition that he was to board at Mr. Sterrett's house; and when he went to dinner on the day of his arrival, a lady of the family expressed her opinion of him in the following terms :—“ So, Mr. Sterrett, you 've hired that fellow to work for you, have you? Well, you won't keep him three days." In three days she had changed her opinion; and to this hour the good lady cannot bring herself to speak otherwise than kindly of him, though she is a stanch daughter of turbulent Erie, and 'must say, that certain articles which appeared in the Tribune during the WAR, did really seem too bad from one who had been himself an Eriean.' But then, he gave no more trouble in the house than if he had n't been in it.'

Erie, famous in the Last War but one, as the port whence Commodore Perry sailed out to victory—Erie, famous in the last war of all, as the place where the men, except a traitorous thirteen, and the women, except their faithful wives, all rose as ONE MAN against the Railway Trains, saying, in the tone which is generally described as not to be misunderstood': "Thus far shalt thou go without stopping for refreshment, and no farther," and achieved as Break of Gauge men, the distinction accorded in another land to the Break o' Day boys-Erie, which boasts of nine thousand inhabitants, and aspires to become the Buffalo of Pennsylvania-Erie, which already has business enough to sustain many stores wherein not every article known to traffic is sold, and where a man cannot consequently buy coat, hat, boots, physic, plough, crackers, grindstone and penknife, over the same counter-Erie, which has a Mayor and Aldermen, a dog-law, and an ordinance against shooting off guns in the street under a penalty of five dollars for each and every offense--Erie, for the truth cannot be longer dashed from utterance, is the shabbiest and most broken-down looking large town, I, the present writer, an individual not wholly untraveled, ever saw, in a free State of this Confederacy.

The shores of the lake there are 'bluffy,' sixty feet or more above the water, and the land for many miles back is nearly a dead level, exceedingly fertile, and quite uninteresting. No, not quite For

CHAPTER V.

HE WANDERS.

knaco k. v, v Poney-His first Overcoat-Home to his Father's Log House-Ranger The cou.h, for work-The Sore Leg Cured-Gets Employment, but little MoneyAutouisme ne Draught-Players-Goes to Erie, Pa-Interview with an EditorBocodes a Journe, man in the Office-Description of Erie-The Lake-His Generos ity to his Father His New Clothes-No more work at Erie--Starts for New York.

"WELL, Horace, and where are you going now?" asked the kind andlady of the tavern, as Horace, a few days after the closing of the printing-office, appeared on the piazza, equipped for the roadi. c., with his jacket on, and with his bundle and his stick in his hand.

"I am going," was the prompt and sprightly answer, "to Pennsylvania, to see my father, and there I shall stay till my leg gets well." る

With these words, Horace laid down the bundle and the stick, and took a seat for the last time on that piazza, the scene of many a peaceful triumph, where, as Political Gazetteer, he had often given the information that he alone, of all the town, could give; where, as political partisan, he had often brought an antagonist to extremities; where, as oddity, he had often fixed the gaze and twisted the neck of the passing peddler.

And was there no demonstration of feeling at the departure of so distinguished a personage? There was. But it did not take the form of a silver dinner-service, nor of a gold tea ditto, nor of a piece of plate, nor even of a gold pen, nor yet of a series of resolutions. While Horace sat on the piazza, talking with his old friends, who gathered around him, a meeting of two individuals was held in the corner of the bar-room. They were the landlord and one of his boarders; and the subject of their deliberations were, an old brown overcoat belonging to the latter. The landlord had the floor, and his speech was to the following purport:

"He felt like doing something for Horace before he went. Horace was an entirely unspeakable person. He had lived a long time in the house; he had never given any trouble, and we feel for him as for our own son. Now, there is that brown over-coat of yours. It's cold on the canal, all the summer, in the mornings and evenings. Horace is poor and his father is poor. You are owing me a little, as much as the old coat is worth, and what I say is, let us give the poor fellow the overcoat, and call our account squared." This feeling oration was received with every demonstration of ap proval, and the proposition was carried into effect forthwith. The landlady gave him a pocket Bible. In a few minutes more, Horace rose, put his stick through his little red bundle, and both over his shoulder, took the overcoat upon his other arm, said 'Good-by,' to his friends, promised to write as soon as he was settled again, and set off upon his long journey. His good friends of the tavern followed him with their eyes, until a turn of the road hid the bent and shambling figure from their sight, and then they turned away to praise him and to wish him well. Twenty-five years have passed; and, to this hour, they do not tell the tale of his departure without a certain swelling of the heart, without a certain glistening of the softer pair of eyes.

It was a fine, cool, breezy morning in the month of June, 1830. Nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smile which plays upon her changeful countenance only when she is attired in her best. Deceptive smile! The forests upon those hills of hilly Rutland, brimming with foliage, concealed their granite ribs, their chasms, their steeps, their precipices, their morasses, and the reptiles that lay coiled among them; but they were there. So did the alluring aspect of the world hide from the wayfarer the struggle, the toil, the danger that await the man who goes out from his seclusion to confront the world ALONE-the world of which he knows nothing except by hearsay, that cares nothing for him, and takes no note of his arrival. The present wayfarer was destined to be quite alone in his conflict with the world, and he was destined to wrestle with it for many years before it yielded him anything more than a show of submission. How prodigal of help is the Devil to his scheming and guileful servants! But the Powers Celestial