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As I have nothing better to do, it is clear that I cannot do better than get rid of a few melancholy hours, by a fond recollection of past events; wherein I have (it has so happened) been a chief feature. In these recollections, I find a great deal to congratulate myself upon, but very little for which I can, with any consistency, affect gratitude. My vices have been, and are, not worth mentioning; my virtues I do not care to speak about. It is well said, "Virtue is its own reward;" but it is not well that it should be so.

I was, it has been told me, an extraordinary child; giving early indications of a wonderful precocity of intellect and fertility of imagination, which soon discovered itself in harmless and pleasant conceits of shifting facts occasionally, but innocently, from my own proper shoulders to the

back of others. How soon did I scout, nay, utterly contemn, those absurd chronicles of the nursery, narrated by its venerable occupant !— how soon set at nought the rule of that garrulous woman! Nor did my youth belie the promise of my infancy. Suffice it, that to the prodigality of nature was superadded the liberal endowment of art.

And here I cannot but suspect that many of my qualifications have rather tended to pluck me back in my progress through the world. Thus, 1 ATHENEUM, VOL. 9, 2d series.

my knowledge of billiards was not very cheaply purchased, by being compelled to place into thorough repair the ruined limbs of a helpless marker, whom I casually cast out of the window.

My advancement in the science of fencing was sullied, if not retarded, by a silly accident. I chanced inadvertently, to dig out with my foil the sinister orb that figured in the countenance of my gigantic friend, Lieutenant Jacks-an orb, I was afterwards apprized, never failing at an ogle-fatal in point-blank encounter. Alas! Lieutenant Jacks was never after held in any account by the ladies, who looked upon him with as much indifference as upon that do mestic Polyphemus-a bodkin.

My skill in swimming ofttimes seduced me to the treacherous deep. Caught by the leg, as in a vice, by a cramp-tortured tyro, I have been fain to

"Visit the bottom of the monstrous world," toe in digit, and have been grateful, indeed, to emerge by hook or by crook of the Humane Society. Drowning persons do not "catch at straws," whatever some may affect to believe.

The Major and I were, in all respects, precisely similar-in taste, habits, person-exactly alike. The Major was that very man whom it

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