POSTSCRIPT. FOUND IN THE HANDWRITING OF MR. KNICKERBOCKER. THE preceding tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of the Manhattoes,1 at which were present many of its sagest and most illustrious burghers. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face; and one whom I strongly sus pected of being poor, he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was concluded there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermer, who had been asleep the greater part of the time. There was, however, one tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eyebrows, who maintained a grave and rather severe face throughout; now and then folding his arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men, who never laugh but upon good grounds, when they have reason and the law on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided, and silence was restored, he leaned one arm or the elbow of his chair, and sticking the other akimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly sage motion 1 The city of New York, as it is named in Diedrich Knicker bocker's (Irving's) History of New York. of the head, and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the story, and what it went to prove. The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with an air of infinite deference, and, lowering the glass slowly to the table, observed that the story was intended most logically to prove : "That there is no situation in life but has its ad vantages and pleasures, provided we will but take a joke as we find it; "That, therefore, he that runs races with goblir troopers is likely to have rough riding of it; 66 Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state." The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllogism; while, methought, the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but still he thought the story a little on the extravagant; there were one or two points on which he had his doubts. "Faith, sir,” replied the story-teller, "as to that matter, I don't believe one half of it myself." D. K. INTRODUCTION TO PHILIP OF POKANOKET. It is still a matter KING Philip's War was due to the steady encroachment of the English upon the forests and hunting-grounds of the Indians. For fifty-five years peaceful relations had been maintained between the colonists and the powerful tribe of the Wampanoags (Waum-pa-no'-agz), on whose lands Plymouth and other settlements had been planted. Philip, chief of the tribe, foreseeing the ultimate destruction of his people, resolved to depart from the policy of Massasoit, his father, and to turn upon the colonists. Rumors of war preceded its outbreak for many years. of doubt whether hostilities began in an accident or as the result of a deliberate plot. Once opened, they were carried on in a vindictive and desperate spirit. The war began in June, 1675, at Swansea, in Plymouth colony. It involved the Narragansetts and other New England tribes. Month after month saw scenes of ambush, assault, burning, pillaging, and butchery. The war was as savagely carried on by the English as by the Indians. It ended in the summer of 1676 through sheer exhaustion of the Indians. During this war thirteen towns were destroyed and many others suffered severely, six hundred buildings were burned, six hundred colonists were slain, many thousands suffered directly from the losses that accompany war, and frightful expenses were rolled up, entailing burdens upon feeble and sparsely settled communities that it took years to lighten. The mental anguish everywhere caused by the secrecy and eruelty of methods natural to Indian warfare, even when the dreaded blow did not fall, cannot be told. From two to three thousan Indians were killed or captured, and the wretched remnants of the tribes whose power was broken either united with other tribes or, lingering about their old homes, ceased thereafter to be a serious menace to the colonies. The various remains of Indian tribes in Massachusetts to-day, some of them descendants of the Indians that sur vived King Philip's War, number between one and two thousand souls. They are, to a certain extent, wards of the State of whose soil they were once the haughty owners. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. AN INDIAN MEMOIR. As monumental bronze unchanged his look; CAMPBELL. It is to be regretted that those early writers who treated of the discovery and settlement of America have not given us more particular and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive state, and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unexplored tracts of human nature; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment; and perceiving those generous and romantic qualities which have been artificially cultivated by society, vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude maguificence. In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away, or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good breeding; and he practises so many petty deceptions, and affects so many generous sentiments, for the purposes of popularity, that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and, in a great degree, a solitary and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his nature, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of early colonial history wherein are recorded, with great bitterness, the outrages of the Indians, and their wars with the settlers of New Eng land. It is painful to perceive, even from these partial narratives, how the footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines; how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust of conquest; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at the idea, how |