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is almost afraid to record, because the manners of the simple times in which the event transpired are so different from ours, that the narration may bring suspicion either on the prudence of the young lady or on the veracity of the narrator; yet as Providence commands all men to speak the truth on all occasions, the command shall be obeyed, and the consequences be left to Providence. Know, then, that she took passage in the aforesaid sloop, on its return trip, and went to the great city with no protector but her own judgment, assisted by the friendly counsel of the aforesaid young man; and what may be deemed stranger still, no person thought her conduct improper or hazardous; nor in fact did she encounter either impropriety or danger, except that she felt very unusual sensations; but whether they proceeded from the novel scenery around her, or from the presence of the young man, remains still an undecided point of history.

The voyage was sufficiently long to furnish a large volume with incidents, were the writer gifted with the ordinary powers of amplification and description. To let go the anchor when the tide failed, and to hoist it up when the tide served, to pull in the jib boom when the vessel tacked, and to let it swing out again on the opposite side as the sloop dodged from one bank of the river to the other, were noble opportunities for displaying the daring skill and muscular energies of the young man to the wondering gaze of the young maiden, to whom all the operations were novel and interesting. Nor were more romantic incidents wanting; for at many stoppages, the sailors, while waiting for a tide or a wind, lowered a small boat from the sides of the sloop, and the passengers went ashore to purchase fresh milk at the farm-houses near the margin of the river, to ramble a little way into the country, and perchance to find some apple-trees with goodly fruit thereon; and which, being gathered without compensation or license, added much to the piquancy of the fruit. But the most pungent amusement, and one that never failed to excite the hilarity of all the voyagers, was when the helmsman would slily, but in apparent unconsciousness, steer against the nets that were spread in the river for shad, and thus enable the sailors to extract the fish; while the fisherman on the shore would bluster at the outrage, in all the abuse of impotent rage.

At New-York they eventually arrived, on the sixth day of their embarkation, and safely, notwithstanding the storms and tempests which occasionally had varied the incidents of the voyage. The captain, who in the language of the times was called 'the skipper,' lived in the city, and as had been preconcerted, took the fair stranger home to his house, where she was kindly welcomed by his wife, who soon discovered in her a remarkable resemblance to a dear daughter who had died a year previously. The captain now recognised the likeness, and his son (the young man of whom we have been speaking,) recognised it also, and his two sisters were not slow in the same recognition; accordingly nothing can exceed the love parental, sisterly and fraternal that suddenly seized the whole family toward their visitor. The old lady and the captain could not help calling her daughter, while the young gentleman and young ladies were

equally impelled to call her sister; so that the scene might well have gladdened every beholder's heart who possessed a spark of

benevolence.

Out of doors the sights were as captivating as the scene in doors was affectionate. The stranger was delighted at the ships in the harbor, the bustle on the quays, the houses without number, the streets without end, the crowds without cessation, the ladies without negli gence, and the gentleman without awkwardness; the rumbling of carts, the ringing of bells, the splendor of shop windows and the twinkling of lamps. New-York stood without a rival as the only place worth living in, and while the visitor rejoiced in the accident that had brought her there, and shuddered at the dulness of Albany, from which she had escaped as by almost a miracle, and overflowed with gratitude toward the good people whose hospitality she was enjoying; she was in a delightful humor to bear the kind banterings of the sisters, who proposed that she should accept of brother Charles, and enjoy these delights for ever. Brother Charles himself was not backward in sustaining these hints, but plied his suit so earnestly, that long before the sloop was prepared to trail its slow length back to Albany, Miss Lucinda Tompkins of old Fort Schuyler, became the wife of Mr. Charles Augustus Lusher, son of Frederick William Lusher, skipper of the sloop Rising Sun of Coenties slip, New-York; for such was the announcement of the marriage, as it appeared in the Commercial Advertiser, the only newspaper that was published in the city of New-York, at the time in question.

The festivities of the wedding have not been chronicled, nor the incidents of the honey-moon; but as all things must come to an end, these events experienced the general law; and eventually all the novelties of New-York had been enjoyed till they had ceased from being novel; and worse, all the good humor of the Misses Lusher, all the maternal affection of old Mrs. Lusher,and even all the patience of the old skipper came to an end in process of time; and the curious discovery was at length demonstrated anew, that no house is large enough for two families. Young Mrs. Lusher was also urgent to live alone like other people, and for the furtherance of the project, she tendered to her husband all that remained of the gold she had brought from home, and which by dint of various purchases, had insensibly pined away to about half of its original quantity.

To house-keeping the parties went, though before they obtained the numerous conveniences of a city household, all the remaining gold became expended; and Mrs. Lusher was brought to remember, that in the almost forgotten log-house of her father, were two more boxes of larger dimensions than the one whose contents had proved so evanescent. To fetch number two, Mr. Charles swiftly arranged with no little pleasure, and departed under the strong injunctions of his wife to abide by the intentions of the donor, and not to touch number three, till the contents of number two should be exhausted; an event, how. ever, which she intended should not occur; for she began to perceive that money takes to itself wings, and needs the supervision of a vigi. lant keeper.

On arriving at the old cabin, after a journey which would have been tedious had it not been relieved by the principle, that the labor we delight in physics pain,' every thing was found just as it had been left; except that the log in front of the door, had by some means fallen down. Box number two, the object of his journey, was not so large as number three, which stood abreast of it, and seemed to protest against being left alone by the withdrawal of its companion. The silent protest was not without its effect on the sensitive feelings of the young man; and he even ventured to lift the box, and found it heavier than number two, as it ought to have been, in accordance with its superior size. All the blood in his body seemed to rush into his head, as he thus contemplated the golden charms of his wife. She never seemed to his imagination so beautiful as at that moment; and much his conscience smote him, that he had presumed on some occasions to disregard her wishes. He was even tempted to disregard them now, and to carry home both boxes instead of number two alone. He might hide it, and she would not know that he had brought it. Why trust so much treasure where it could so easily be stolen? These reasons had well nigh made him unfaithful to the injunctions of his wife, when his superstition came in as a powerful auxiliary to his fidelity. Superstition was among the prevailing weaknesses of the age in which he lived; and when he reflected on the strange character of the old trader, his long residence among the Indians, and the mystery which always seemed to surround him, he was afraid to violate his wishes; and carefully locking again the cupboard, retraced his way homeward, with only box number two.

At home he arrived, and the box was eagerly opened; but to the sad disappointment of the owners, it contained only coins of silver. Still the amount was not small, and it consisted of dollars, and the different fractional parts of dollars that were current. At the bottom of the box was found, in the hand-writing of the old man, and manifestly intended for his daughter, 'Live where you can.'

This seemed to imply that as the gold was expended which enabled her to live any where, the present supply was only sufficient to live on in certain circumscribed places. But so limited seemed not its capacity to the present possessors; and beside, was not another and still larger box awaiting their necessities when the present should be exhausted!

Thus consoled and reassured, the silver was carefully locked up in a snug closet of which Mr. Charles carefully took the key, and placed it in his waistcoat pocket among the things to be preserved most safely. The act was performed with all the firmness and deliberation of a man who knows what he is about, and wishes to impress other persons with a sure sense of the same fact.

But in spite of the aforesaid pantomime, and though Mr. Charles was a very pretty young man, as his wife had long known, he was not the person to make a very prudent use of money; and this his wife had lately begun to suspect. He was both lazy and inclined to dissipation. He smoked almost incessantly, continued out till very late hours at night, and not unfrequently returned with unequivocal signs

of inebriety. In addition to these causes of growing discontent on the part of the wife, she could not help observing with dissatisfaction, that she was not the distinguished person in the city, that she had been in Albany and Schenectady; and while the novelties of New-York palled upon her senses, her heart secretly pined after the lost self-complacency which had been fostered by the adulation toward her of the former places.

With these feelings silently fermenting in her bosom, her dissatisfaction with the city became every day stronger, and its attractions every day weaker; but when she at length ventured to promulge her feelings in conversation with her husband, they grew rapidly, and soon became uncontrollable. She wished him to remove to Albany, and eventually urged it forcibly and incessantly, while he deemed Albany the most intolerable of places; and New-York, where he had always lived, the only residence where existence was endurable.

A dissatisfaction in married life is like a rent in a knit stocking, it must be speedily repaired or it will become irreparable. The latter result was unfortunately realized in the present instance, for the more Mrs. Lucinda complained, the more indifferent to her complaints became Mr. Charles; and the more indifferent became Mr. Charles, the more urgent became the complaints of Mrs. Lucinda. Like all descents, the matrimonial fall was rapidly increasing in intensity by a sort of compound progression, so that he began to drink openly, and she to fret as openly. But as death had been her friend in the commencement of life, and released her from the solitude of Old Fort Schuyler, so again death stepped kindly forward, and released her from the tumults of New-York. Mr. Charles, in coming home late one night in a state of pretty high excitement, staggered off Coenties' Slip into the river and was drowned.

The historian hates grief, especially funerals, therefore we will pass over the sad intelligence that early the next morning was brought to Mrs. Lusher; her returning love, when love was no longer appreciable by its object, and her self-reproach, when reclamation was no longer practicable. The readers must supply these omissions in any way most agreeable to their respective tastes. The sad events were, however, no sooner faded into the past, than Mrs. Lusher began to put in practice her project of returning to Albany, against which no obstacle any longer existed. Her known intention soon brought upon her a host of bills for debts, of whose existence she had previously no knowledge and their liquidation speedily stripped her of all her remaining silver, and even then numerous debts were left unpaid. In this dilemma she instinctively thought of box number three. The exigency was arrived in which it could be properly resorted to, and therefore promising her remaining creditors a speedy payment, she took with her only a few changes of apparel, and proceeded hopefully toward the scenes of her early childhood, where, after various accidents of flood and field, and without having stopped unnecessarily an hour upon the way, she safely arrived, and found all things as before related, and box number three unopened.

Box number three was, as we have several times stated, the largest

of the set, and the heaviest; and as she had been accustomed in early life to many masculine operations, she knew enough of the use of a hammer and chisel to open the box without difficulty; but lo! her surprise was equal to her mortification, when she saw no gold, no silver, but copper. She took out handful after handful, in the eager hope that some gold would be found, or some silver, but the whole was small copper coins, such as used to be current before the introduction of American cents. At the bottom of the box she found this label, 'He only can live where he likes who will like where he lives.' To return to New-York with this small sum of money would be useless, she therefore left the debtors to make the most they could out of the effects she had left in the city, and taking with her the coppers, (for they being her all, were not to be neglected,) she returned slowly and sad to Albany. Whether time had changed her, or grief and disappointment, or whether the change was in the people of Albany, we know not, but the poor Widow Lusher looked, in their eyes, not like the rich heiress Lucinda had looked some few years previously, nor did they appear to her like the admiring, hospitable, and affectionate friends they had been in those happy days. The maidens had all become matrons, and no longer possessed any love of gayety or any leisure for society. The beaux had all become husbands and were too busy in supplying the wants of their growing families to expend any time in unnecessary civilities. The old people of the former day were either dead or had become so benumbed with accumulated infirmities, that they were the same as dead for any purposes of friendly recognition, or active benevolence, excepting only one bed-ridden old woman, who seemed rejoiced to see her, and claimed some present services in remuneration of former hospitalities. Poor Lucinda was glad of even this recognition and would have requited it by administering personally for a few days to the wants of her helpless old friend, but a married daughter, with whom the sick woman lived, intimated that the old woman was in her dotage and needed no assistance, and that the house was already too full of inmates to admit of another.

Finding herself thus a stranger and neglected where she had expected sympathy and admiration, the Widow Lusher concluded she would indignately abandon a town which was given up to selfishness, and fix her residence in the more simple but good-hearted city of Schenectady, among her earliest friends and the friends of her father, over whose memory she now wept bitterly, for the first time since his death. In the melioration of her feelings by this outbreak of grief, she felt some reproach at ever having been tempted to prefer Albany to Schenectady, the tinsel of politeness for the solid gold of unsophisticated kindness, and she mentally resolved that no returning prosperity and no change of time should ever again make her forgetful of their friendship.

To Schenectady she accordingly returned, yearning with good feelings toward its whole population, but the change there was worse than at Albany, for the Albanians were simply indifferent and forgetful, but at Schenectady the people remembered too much and were

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