pet and crimson curtains of the drawing room. I unfolded my cloak, and took from it a pair of substantial overshoes; I say the truth when I declare that I felt as conscious of innate dignity, as if I had been rolling in the daintiest hack of the metropolis. I arrived at my lodgings and took off the frippery that had galled my throat like an iron collar; the white stock in its ephemeral purity,—and those other linen liars, that stand sponsors too often for rags, which the very washerwoman hides from her own babies.

But

I may be a serious man; I trust I am not an ill-natured one. there are things that curdle the milk of human kindness in the bosom, where it flowed most freely. I had rather be chained to the rock of Prometheus, and let the vulture gorge himself upon my vitals, than be pecked at by the hooting owl, and have my blood sucked out in drops by the fluttering bat. Tear the captive into fragments with wild horses, it is but a gasp of agony, and soul and sense dissolve; but strain him slowly on the rack, let him feel the sinew bursting, and the bone cracking; this is the poetry of torment.

As I sat by the embers of the fire in my lonely chamber, and retraced the adventures of the evening, thoughts like these, bitter, blighting thoughts, came over me at intervals. And yet every other moment I found myself smiling in spite of myself, at something which had happened. Alas! so it is with the poor passive mind! The wind blows over her from the region of flowers and foliage; it ceases, and the next breath she feels is a blast from the deadly Upas.

Well, there were not many Troys to be battered at for ten years; and so one day an old man, who was blind and had nothing else to do, amused himself with telling the story. I will tell my campaign of an evening, because it was the first and last time these limbs were to be shackled in armor. Now that it is all over, I shall try to make as pleasant an affair of it as I can.

My laundress, or "blanchisseuse," as the dear transplanted daffodil would have had it, did all for me that honest paymaster could expect from faithful woman. For other matters, with the exception of substituting pumps for boots, I went in the same attire which I have worn with decency, nay, I may say with credit, in the sunshine of the crowded sidewalk. As I went on foot, of course I did not wear my thin shoes through the dirt, but made use of the excellent ones to which I have before alluded.

When I got to the house, they led me into a room where I changed my shoes, and combed my hair with a little pocket comb I always carry about me. I was going into the room immediately to ask the old gentleman and his wife how they did, but a young gentleman stopped me, and held out his arm to me;-I suppose it is customary. I made my bow, and felt so little encouragement from the look of things, to enter into conversation, that I put my right hand into my bosom in the manner of the portraits in the corner of the gallery of paintings. I cannot remember what I did with my left hand, but I have the general impression that it felt like a superfluity.

Young woman! At that moment any look but the one you gave me, I could have endured calmly. You have forgotten it, but I have not forgotten it;-ay, and I shall remember it when that contemptuous eye and curling lip are sunken and faded. No man, be he proud or

humble, independent or servile, can bear to have his very existence cast in his teeth, plainly and legibly by the features of a stranger.

I find that instead of telling my little story, I have a constant tendency to fall into a kind of parliamentary declamation. I can only account for it by the fact, that I have lately been reading a volume or two of speeches and orations, which I picked up very cheap at an auction. Perhaps nobody is so isolated, that he does not recognize some friend in the first crowd where his fortunes may lead him. I found three, but one of them had a very handsome eye-glass, which refracted a good deal when I was near what I supposed to be the focus. One was a plain man of forty, money-making and marriageable; the other was a lady,—date unknown. One introduced me to a nephew, and the other to a niece. The young gentleman had the appearance of belonging to our species; that is, he was bulbous at one end, and bifurcated at the other, but as to the rest, he seemed to be one of those ingenious humbugs nature sometimes puts upon us, to prove that soul may be a non sequitur to body. It was all in vain to talk one's best at him; as wel' might one look for thunder from the clod that has drank up the light ning; as expect an answer, or even an intelligent look, from such a pithless effigy. Such people one does find now and then, miserable, unflavored weeds, passively receiving the slip-slop that falls from the urn of colloquial charity.

When I say that all the romance of my story is now coming, I hope no heart will break its golden-clasped girdle in the throb of anticipation. Love, at first sight, is a piece of mysticism, altogether too impalpable for our times. Many honest young people quiz each other like scarecrows, every morning, who, the evening before, considered each other undoubted angels. The lady of unregistered antiquity introduced me, as I said, to her niece. God bless her! I find I have nothing to say about it. What is description of any thing beautiful? The rose holds up her leaves, and the morning sun stoops from his throne to trace her shadow; but the color and odor are not there. The deductions of intellect may be unwoven into their elementary filaments,—but our feelings are of a tissue that dissolves when we would separate it. There is something definite in a painting, and therefore we look with indifference upon the artist's picture of his mistress; the reason why a poet's description of his lady love excites our sensibilities, is, that the nicest delineation is so devoid of any thing peculiar to the object described, that almost every one finds it familiar to his associations. But I am beginning to cannonade again. I had been sitting about an hour, by a solid old silver watch, which was my grandfather's, on the sofa, and by the side of the young lady to whom I said I had an indefinite liking, for which I could not give any very good reasons, or, at least, any better ones than any one else on a similar occasion. Another lady, for reasons best known to herself, thought it necessary to edge along sideways into bodily contiguity, and sidle edgewise into conversational intimacy. With good sea-room, I consider myself competent to the management of one lady, so she have understanding enough to float her, and if she cannot steer herself, will mind the helm. But under the most favorable circumstances, I will not answer for more than one. With the arrival of the new comer, ended the only happy moments of this miserable evening. As she requested me to favor her

with something for her album, I give her full license to copy into it the following stanzas:

I cannot say if truth there be

In that fantastic tale,
About the bargain made between
The toad and nightingale ;-
But thou,-if thou hast ever called
One heavenly gift thine own,
Hast let it go, and kept unsold
Thine ugliness alone.

O would the blazing chandelier,
That lights each hideous line,
But save its rays for eyes that beam
And cast its shade on thine!
O would the laboring echoes cease
Thine accents to repeat !

Thou wert in shadow doubly fair,
In silence doubly sweet!

I stood alone in a corner, while the floor trembled beneath me to the sound of music and the step of dancers. A little circle of young gentlemen were talking in an earnest and rather mysterious kind of way, at a little distance from me; and from their occasional and anxiously careless glances at me, or it may be from that subtle instinct which every body feels and nobody can account for, I believed myself the subject of their observations. At last, one of them came towards me and apologized for introducing himself, which he did with an affable and easy air, which put my embarrassment to the blush. "I have longed for the pleasure of your acquaintance some time," he said, "and I must make it even in this felonious manner, while I have the opportunity." So gracious a beginning might have excused a heavier offence-indeed, it completely threw me off my guard, and my heart swelled while he proceeded: "I am so familiar with the productions of your pen, that I almost feel as if I knew their author. I hardly know whether I have been most pleased with your comic or serious efforts. I piqued myself vastly in detecting your hand in those capital verses, beginning

My father's horse was black and white,

My grandam's cat was gray-"

I was unconscious of ever having made any such verses, but as it would have been awkward to disclaim them, I bowed as if in acknowledgement of the tribute paid to my supposed offspring and myself. (Within a week what should I see in a certain fount, but six stanzas of doggrel, beginning with those accursed lines, and my name at the head of them!) In the mean time he went on in such expressions of kindness and respect for me and my talents, that I could not resist the temptation, and out came something I had resolved never to say any thing about until the world had seen it in print, and the public voice should be clamorous for its unknown author. Just as I began, he begged me to seat myself, which, as I was tired of standing, I was very glad to do. He took a fan from the edge of a sofa and began exercising it first for himself, then back and forward between us, and then for my exclusive benefit. I had warmed from recitation into elocution, from elocution into declamation, and was rising from declamation into

gesticulation-when the music suddenly ceased-the cotillons deserted their stations, and all eyes turned, and all ears listened to the simpleton spouting to the jackanapes that stood fanning him as if he had been a lily-livered school-girl.

I have nothing more to add. The finery which I wore on that illfated evening, is gone to one who keenly marked and freely mentioned its blemishes, but who asked not if the heart it had once covered was broken. If, in the course of events, it should revisit the light of society, may he whom it adorns be more fortunate than its former miserable owner! O. W. H.

THE UNSUCCESSFUL AUTHOR.

"Rad. What are you at, there, Bob? Bob. Writing for the newspapers, father;-they say, next to a duel, it is the best road to lasting notoriety." MS. PLAY.

It is generally admitted that authors and physicians are peculiarly irascible when their own labors become the subject of critical examination that they brook neither advice nor contradiction in a spirit of honorable or even wholesome moderation. Adequate and satisfactory reasons for this truth have so often been assigned, that it is unnecessary here to intrude them upon the notice of the reader; nor should I now advert to the fact, but to mark a striking exception in the person of your humble servant, the writer of this article. Permit me, therefore, worthy reader, to bespeak your attention a moment, while I A round, unvarnished tale deliver Of my whole course.

It is now ten years, this day, since I began to write for the press; and throughout this long period, not a month has gone by in which I have not furnished, for some journal, more than one page of genuine "original matter," and yet not a single line has ever been honored by publication! Notwithstanding this want of success, I have never been angry with my judges, though every "notice to correspondents," has contained for me an admonitory rub, or a sarcastic sneer. This, it must be admitted, is proof positive of a placid disposition, and proof too, that if my labors are not worthy of positive imitation, my mental equanimity certainly is. My maiden communication was a review of Cooper's Spy, under the signature of X. Y. Z; (still a very fashionable combination of alphabetical signs, and will continue so to be, O. P. Q. to the contrary notwithstanding,) addressed to the editor of the Evening

New-York.

The next succeeding paper, I run over eagerly. It contained a host of conspicuous advertisements of " Havana Coffee," "Patent Medicines," and "School Books," but no communication of mine. This was a damper. I ran my eye over the paper again; no; the thing was among the missing;" but at the very fag end of all editorial trash appeared the ternate ultimity of the alphabet, ornamented with four inverted commas and forming the nominative in a simple sentence thus: "X. Y. Z."" is under consideration." "It will bear it," said I, exultingly, and week after week I lived upon expectation, but X. Y. Z. never made its appearance.

My next effusion was a descriptive poem, written and re-written till its perfection seemed unequivocal. My friends declared it exquisite, and my enemies redoubled their envy. It had no fault but its shortIt opened, as every poem should, by the announcement of definite localities, in which allusions were sufficiently clear without being prosaical, as may be seen by the following transcript :

ness.

From the Emporium of the rugged north,

West to the Nipmuk where it breaks in froth,
O'er many a hill where once the savage trod,
Lies a small town, &c.

un

Here is a lofty stride from Boston, over rocks, hills and valleys, to Woonsocket Falls in Rhode-Island. Then a hasty glance at the tamed, untamable" son of the forest; and finally, at a small town in that region too well known to require, in form, its distinctive appellation. This production found its way to the same editor who had my former one "under consideration," and in due time came his journal. My first object was to look for the unqualified praise which the editor had undoubtedly bestowed on the poem. I run through the three first pages; nothing was to be seen but " Adams and Jackson," " Major Noah and the Enquirer," "Distressing Fires," and the "Small Pox." There is but little poetry in all this. But the fourth page was the terra incognito-here undoubtedly the poem would be found. No, nothing but absconding negroes and vile cuts of houses and ships occupied the page! "The man is a fool," said I," as destitute of taste as of judgement-knows nothing either of prose or poetry, and I will wager a plump filbert, is ignorant of the fact, that Nipmuk is the original name of the Blackstone river, or that Grafton was called by the natives, Hosanamisan. The charlatan shall have no more of my assistance." And I regarded my word, for I ordered his paper discontinued immediately. Neither malice nor anger dictated this resolution; it was the result of magnanimous pity.

It was not long before a new medium of communication was selected through which my literary labors might come before the world. This was a small country paper, usually made up of antiquated news, thread bare bon mots and pathetic stories; (the latter happily fitted to the latitude and longitude of girlish predilections;) interspersed here and there with an advertisement, like plums in aunt Margery's puddings, which were never known to exceed, in number, the seven primary planets of the solar system. On the whole it was, and is, a very "respectable" country paper; a little too much, in later years, devoted to the interests of a certain celebrated " military chieftain," but still a very useful journal. A short epigram, which I had made extemporaneously, on seeing a beautiful young lady in the act of "converting" a well remembered gown into an under skirt, was my first attempt with this new guardian of the public morals. It sleeps to this day, for any thing that I know to the contrary, among the rejected gems of the editor's archives. How justly or righteously you shall decide.