weeks past the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself." "I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull.” "Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the shot' - that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree; and had the treasure been beneath theshot,' the error would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated impressions that treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain." "But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle-how excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist upon letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull ?" "Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea." "Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?" "That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd — if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit; perhaps it required a dozen-who shall tell?" NINETY-NINE IN THE SHADE. BY ROSSITER JOHNSON. Он, for a lodge in a garden of cucumbers! Oh, for a vale which at midday the dew cumbers! Oh, for a little one-story thermometer, With nothing but zeros all ranged in a row! To measure the moisture that rolls from my brow! Oh, that this cold world was twenty times colder! Oh, for a turn of its dreadful cold shoulder; Oh, for a grotto to typify heaven, Scooped in the rock, under cataract waste! Oh, for a soda fount spouting up boldly, From every hot lamp-post against the hot sky! Oh, for a draught from a cup of cold pizen And oh, for a resting place in the cold grave, SAM SLICK AND THE NOVA SCOTIANS. BY THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON. [THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON, Canadian judge and humorist, was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, December, 1796; called to the bar in 1820; chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas and judge of the Supreme Court from 1828 to 1856, when he resigned and removed to England, where he remained till his death, August 27, 1865. He wrote very many works, including a history of Nova Scotia; but one of them has sunk deep into popular memory, "The Clockmaker; or, Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville" (1837-1840). It was the first work in which "dialect" American was used; Artemus Ward says it founded the American school of humor. It is a bitter satire on the sluggishness and inefficiency of the Nova Scotians, contrasted with the alert wits of the New Englanders.] THE CLOCKMAKER. I HAD heard of Yankee clock peddlers, tin peddlers, and Bible peddlers, especially of him who sold Polyglot Bibles (all in English) to the amount of sixteen thousand pounds. The house of every substantial farmer had three substantial ornaments,a wooden clock, a tin reflector, and a Polyglot Bible. How is it that an American can sell his wares, at whatever price he pleases, where a bluenose would fail to make a sale at all? I will inquire of the Clockmaker the secret of his success. "What a pity it is, Mr. Slick" (for such was his name), "what a pity it is," said I, "that you, who are so successful in teaching these people the value of clocks, could not also teach them the value of time." "I guess," said he, "they have got that ring to grow on their horns yet, which every four-year-old has in our country. We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents. They do nothing in these parts, but eat, drink, smoke, sleep, ride about, lounge at taverns, make speeches at temperance meetings, and talk about House of Assembly.' If a man don't hoe his corn, and he don't hoe a crop, he says it is all owing to the Bank; and if he runs into debt and is sued, why he says the lawyers are a curse to the country. They are a most idle set of folks, I tell you.' 99 "But how is it," said I, "that you manage to sell such an immense number of clocks (which certainly cannot be called necessary articles) among a people with whom there seems to be so great a scarcity of money?" Mr. Slick paused, as if considering the propriety of answer |