I bought Charley for four hundred and fifty dollars, and it was a good investment.

The sun is growing warm. Come into the shade, Franky! They have not finished digging yet. I had no idea it took so large a hole to put the poor old horse in.

Charley soon became my pet, and with reason, for every one allowed him to be a most valuable animal. True, there were a good many nags about that could beat him on a brush, but for long drives he had few equals; and those were the drives I liked, living so far from the city, and going to and fro continually, to say nothing of numerous ferry-crossings eastward. There was no give-out about that little bay; he was always ready for his work. Many a pleasant spin of from eight to fourteen miles I had with him, sometimes on the Westchester road and the avenue, sometimes on the island. After travelling far enough to tire an ordinary horse, he was just in trim to begin trotting his fastest, so that now and then he would astonish a fancy-man who had been regarding him as merely an average roadster. One afternoon I remember particularly as if it were but yesterday. At that time I was having a passage-of-arms with the great North American Blunderbuss, and wanting to consult some erudite folio, drove down to Harry Masters' after it. A lovely spring afternoon it was, such as we seldom, too seldom enjoy in our rapid country, where spring will glide into summer before the winter is fairly gone. So fresh was the landscape, so genial and Italian-like the atmosphere, that mere existence was a positive luxury. And as Charley bowled along, up-hill and down-hill, over bridges and past taverns, at his easy journey-pace of twelve miles an hour, (for he never was one of your disagreeable brutes, that have no medium between a walk and full speed,) I felt inexpressibly comfortable, and in first-rate condition for pitching into the Blunderbuss. On the whole, it is just possible that my whole turnout added to the cheerfulness of the scene. Charley had a new harness on that fitted like wax, and his owner was adorned with a new white hat; the wagon had just been varnished, and in the strap of the seat alongside me was stuck a jolly posy from our own garden, which I was taking in for Mrs. Masters. Just about a mile from the stones, (it was in the early part of the afternoon, while the road was as yet tolerably clear, and most of those who were out went the other way,) the sharp quick sounds of pattering feet struck my ear. A well-built iron-gray was brushing up behind me in a road-sulky. On ordinary occasions I should not have ventured to risk the difference of weight after coming such a distance, but Charley and I both felt so gay, and he looked so ready for a start as he pricked up his ears at the sound of approaching wheels, that just as the gray had his nose almost over my shoulder, and was about to turn out and pass, I gathered in the reins a little, and told my pet to go. Away he sweeps in his beautiful round trot, pitching back a cloud of dust and pebbles upon the astonished sulky. The gray tries to follow; for a few steps he holds his own in the rear, then the sound of his feet grows fainter in the distance, dying away in a canter. I pull up Charley a little carelessly; he breaks from being too suddenly checked, and comes almost to a full stop. Just as I start him again, the gray, who has meantime settled, comes flying by at a great pace. But Charley is at his

heels in a moment; he presses him close, and is just lapping, when a sudden jolt sends the whip flying out of its socket. There is nothing to be done but pull up and put back. A benevolent Hibernian has picked up the article, and hands it to me. This time I keep fast hold of it. Our friend with the gray has drawn up, and is waiting. All right! you won't have to wait long. Go it, Charley! Just as we are at his wheel, off goes the gray at his best. One on each side of the road, we tear along. It is a dead level, and rather heavy. Charley, with so much weight against him, can't make up that length, for all my coaxing. The gray is going his prettiest, under a tremendous pull. I jerk Charley upon the centre of the road, at the risk of splitting a hoof; he skims the hard Macadam with redoubled velocity, and gains on his antagonist. Go it, mustaches!' cries a small boy, as we pass. Flop! the gray is up. His driver makes a vain effort to catch him into his trot. It's no use; the wagon goes by like a whirlwind, and leaves him so far behind, that he gives up all farther effort. Then I strike the stones, and draw up to a walk; and as the sulky comes slowly trotting along, I remark quite casually to the discomfited jockey, 'I guess your horse has n't been nine miles with four hundred pounds behind him.'

Here I can fancy the lady-reader (if indeed any lady-reader should have gone so far into poor Charley's fragmentary biography) ejaculating, 'What, nothing but horses and racing!' and then passing contemptuously to the next article. Stay awhile, fair dame or gentle damosel. Hath not the noble animal ever played a great part in poetry and romance, from Roderick's Orelio (to go back no farther) down to the charger that carried off the Duchess May and her lover?

"When the bride-groom led the flight on his red roan steed of might,
And the bride lay on his arm, safe, as if she felt no harm,

Smiling out into the night?'

Well now, suppose I show you how Charley assisted in an authentic bit of romance, with a happy termination too; how he restored a disconsolate wife to the arms of an unsuspecting husband. List, then, and be moved.

One summer, I was staying up the river, at Phil. Van Horne's, and, being bound to stay a great part of the summer, had come with all my family, Charley included. Among our neighbors was one who dwelt somewhat farther inland than most of us; an old gentleman named Hertezoff, of Russian descent originally, as the termination of his name implies. A very nice old gentleman he was, though we used to think he might have lived a little nearer to the Hudson without any danger to it from his proximity. But you can't expect people to have every thing, and looks were the forte of the family. Miss Hertezoff was a real American beauty, neither a blonde, nor a brunette, nor yet a compromise between the two, but a union of the best points of each; skin marble-white, hair and eyes dark-brown, cheeks lit up with roses, and so forth. As to her accomplishments and mental furniture, I never had an opportunity of studying them, for she was very much taken up elsewhere; but believe she had, at least, the usual amount of feminine graces and perfections.

About that time came into those parts a stranger who was immediately allowed to be 'some pumpkins,' inasmuch as he was a southerner, rich, young, and handsome. His name was Sinclair Preston; he came from Mississippi, where he owned one estate, beside another in Louisiana. He really was a fine-looking fellow, tall, fresh-complexioned and regularly-featured, with most aristocratic hands and feet; and knew enough to eschew all loud patterns, and dress very quietly. Not to go into particulars, he knocked' all the adjacent male population, native and imported, in the matter of looks, and would have made us all very envious, if the lords of creation ever were envious of such things; but I believe that is a privilege of the other sex. Moreover, he was, for a southerner, marvellously quiet and undemonstrative. He did not get drunk, rarely swore, and, mirabile dictu, never gambled. Nay, more; he always paid his debts when asked, even if they were not debts of honor; and was so disgusted when his state repudiated, that he repudiated it, and ever after called himself a Louisianian. Farther, he had a good education, and did not put 'sir' or 'ma'am' more than half a dozen times into every sentence he uttered. In short, he was a paragon of social virtues but for one unlucky failing. Sinclair Preston was the most forgetful and scatterbrained of men. He was exactly the sort of person to whom the old woman's saying applies: 'If your head were loose, you would forget it.' To make an appointment with him was a farce. If you asked him to dinner a week a-head, and sent him a reminder the day before, it was two to one he never came after all. If he was going on an excursion, and there was no kind friend at hand to jog his memory, he was sure to be wandering somewhere else when the boat started. There was no counting on any of his movements with the most distant approach to certainty.

The rich young southerner having come to our locality, fell in love, according to rule, with the prettiest girl there, which Mary Hertezoff as decidedly was, as Sinclair was the handsomest man. They were engaged very soon after their first acquaintance, and married very soon after their engagement. I am sure the whole affair did not occupy two months. They had a gay wedding one night, and were to start next day on a southern tour. When I say they had a gay wedding, I am not using the adjective at random, or for merely ornamental purposes. It was a gay wedding, a very gay one; perhaps a New-Englander might have called it too gay. Hertezoff had some old Madeira, and the guests knew where it was. I remember that Harry Masters, who tried to steer his household home that night with a four-in-hand, could n't keep in the middle of the turnpike, (which is about as wide as the Third Avenue,) but ran into the ditch, and broke his pole. To be sure, Harry had the excuse of its being a very dusty and windy night, (more by token, as Pat says, I lost a hat of my own on the same occasion,) but some said he was more in the wind than the state of the weather alone could account for. However, my host and I were up in good time next morning, for it would have been a positive sin to lie in bed such mornings as we had. While Phil. and I were running extempore races round the grounds—one of our usual morning amusements, and a very good way of getting up an appetite for breakfast- a boy came along with some game. We were none

of us ardent sportsmen, and should have been very badly off for the article, had we depended on our own exertions for the supply of it; indeed, game was scarce any how, and it was not often that any one in the vicinity had a good lot at a time. So Phil. was glad enough to buy all that the boy had, and then, like a kind, thoughtful, neighborly fellow as he was, he recollected that Hertezoff was very fond of partridges. 'Frank,' said he, 'will you drive down after breakfast, and take these to the old gentleman, with my compliments?' Phil. knew that I was too happy to have any excuse for driving about the country.

Mr. Hertezoff lived not many miles from us, but a pretty good way that is to say, a pretty bad way. - from the steam-boat landing at Vienna. I found his front gate open, and, bowling unceremoniously into it, nearly ran over old Sarah, the cook, who was holding an animated conversation with another servant in the very centre of the lane.

'Something for you,' said I, pointing to the plump birds at my feet. 'Ah! it's little we care for them now,' she replied, regarding the lovely animals with a look of indifference that, in a cook, was positive impiety. 'Why, what in goodness' name is the matter?' Her bewildered look, which I at first attributed to her narrow escape from pulverization under Charley's hoofs, had evidently some more permanent cause.

'O Sir, Mr. Preston 's been and gone, and forgot Mrs. Preston.'

It was so very absurd, and yet so like the man, that I could with difficulty suppress a roar of laughter.

us;

'Yes,' she continued, 'he took the rockaway and the team this morning,' (the Hertezoffs were not so flush of horses and vehicles as some of their establishment was always denoted by the singular number and definite article,) and all his things, and some o' hern. I wonder Jake was such a fool as to go with him. And they did n't find it out for nigh half an hour, and now they're ravin' distracted; and Sam has gone off on old Ploughboy, but he'll never catch 'em.'

I thought it highly probable not, from my own recollections of Ploughboy, the farm-horse; but at any rate there appeared no use for me in the present state of things; and doubtless I should have gone straight back,. but the Hertezoff grounds were so arranged that you could not turn conveniently without driving round the house; so round the house I drove, and at the farther corner of it a ludicrously pitiable spectacle presented itself. The bride, all equipped in her travelling-dress, and looking none the less beautiful for her consternation, was walking, or rather trotting, round the broad stoop that encompassed the house, as if performing some charm to restore

'Her Daphnis to her much-desiring arms.'

In a rocking-chair near the door sat her father, on one side of him a pile of band-boxes, on the other his half-smoked cigar, which had fallen helplessly to the floor. He was rocking as fast as his daughter was running, and every time she passed him in her round, he would lift up his eyes and hands, and exclaim: 'My poor, forsaken child! what is to become of you?'

I checked my horse instinctively. A thought struck me. The landing was seventeen miles off, or a short eighteen at most. The Swallow

ten.

usually arrived there at eleven. I glanced at my watch; it was not yet We had an hour and fourteen minutes. 'Mrs. Preston, I will take you to the boat in time.' 'Can you?' and she stopped short in her career. 'Yes; but you must leave your baggage.'

She glanced at the band-boxes, and hesitated a moment; then, just as I had lightened my vehicle, by pitching out the birds almost into Hertezoff's lap, she leaped into the wagon without waiting for me to bias the front axle and make room for her.

'Hold fast, Mrs. Preston. Partridges, with Mr. Van Horne's compliments. Ke-ip, Charley! Good-bye, Mr. Hertezoff!' and away we rattled down the lane and out at the gate, leaving the old gentleman more bewildered than ever; his daughter whisked away, he had hardly time to see by whom, and three brace of birds left in exchange for her.

Though our road descended most of the way, (else would our chance have been small indeed,) it rose at first, soon after emerging from the Hertezoff place, for nearly a mile, and pretty stiffly too. To press the horse up this hill would have been suicidal; we were obliged to mount at any easy pace. By way of keeping up my companion's spirits during this delay, I extemporized some most apocryphal stories of my nag's performances against time. HEAVEN forgive me for Munchausenizing! I am not sure but I made Charley distance Trustee in a ten-mile heat. However, this romance served to keep Mrs. Preston quiet till we had climbed the ascent. A lovely view it was from the top, and a lovely day to see it in. Every variety of hill and valley and wood and water in sight; and far away below, the blue Hudson and the white sails gliding over it; and far away above, the blue sky and the white clouds sailing on it. But I had no eyes save for my horse's ears and the road straight before me. Straight enough it lay, descending for miles, the few occasional elevations being not more than the velocity due to the previous descent would carry us over without trouble. I drew up the reins: 'Hold fast, Mrs. Preston; don't mind the dust. Ke-ip, Charley!' The gallant bay made a hop forward, and then took hold of the bit and settled down to a tearing trot, making the dust eddy and the pebbles spin around us. 'He-e, boy! g'lang!' and away goes Charley!

And first we overtook the hopeless messenger. Sam, a diminutive black, was bobbing up and down on big Ploughboy at a hobby-horse canter. We shot by him like a steamer past a liner when there is no wind, and my hind-wheel nearly took off the top of one of his boots. Whether he saw that his services were no longer needed, I don't know, for he was instantly lost to sight in our self-raised cloud of dust. 'He-e, boy! he-eh!' and away goes Charley !

What's this? A flock of geese spread over the road. We take no notice, Charley and I, but go right at them; Mrs. Preston cannot suppress a scream. I understand geese; I have seen a great many in Rhode Island, (no arrière pensée against the inhabitants of that good state, though they have adopted the M-e L-w;) it is a physical impossibility to run over them. Right and left they vanish, as by magic, from under our wheels, and the wagon speeds on smoothly without a jar. "That's right; he-e, old fellow!' and away goes Charley!