tachtici, by avui, puls tilated. Expressing astonishment at he assured me that these wounds ha the flesh by the teeth of infuriated drunken quarrels, though the relatio most too horrible to be true. Endea vert his mind from this disgusting top seemed disposed to linger with feroc made some inquiries relative to his was, indeed, a beautiful one, under h and respecting the habits of the prairi animal of the species having crossed n prairie in the gray light of dawn. U inquiry the old man sat silent a mor chin leaning on his hands. Looking with an arch expression, he said, "Stra no larnin; I can't read; but don't t somewhere about old Jacob and the cattle?" "Yes." "Well, and how old streaked and round-spotted creeturs, got the better of all the stock, and ove varsal herd; don't the Book say so so?" so." "Well, now for the wolves: they' but ring-streaked and round-spotted; an er-farmers don't look to it, the prairie-wo the better of all the geese, turkeys, and hins in the barnyard, speckled or no !" My breakfast was now on the table; a substantial fare of corn-bread, butter, honey, fresh eggs, fowl, and coffee, which latter are as invariably visitants at an Illinois table as is bacon at a Kentucky one, and that is saying no little. The exhilarating herb tea is rarely seen. An anecdote will illustrate this matter. A young man, journeying in Illinois, stopped one evening at a log cabin with a violent headache, and requested that never-failing antidote, a cup of tea. There was none in the house; and, having despatched a boy to a distant grocery to procure a pound, he threw himself upon the bed. In a few hours a beverage was handed him, the first swallow of which nearly excoriated his mouth and throat. In the agony of the moment he dashed down the bowl, and rushed half blinded to the fireplace. Over the blaze was suspended a huge iron kettle, half filled with an inky fluid, seething, and boiling, and bubbling, like the witches' caldron of unutterable things in Macbeth. The good old lady, in her anxiety to give her sick guest a strong dish of tea, having never seen the like herself or drank thereof, and supposing it something of the nature of soup, very innocently and ignorantly poured the whole pound into her largest kettle, and set it a boiling. Poultry is the other standing dish of Illinois; and the poor birds seem to realize that their destiny is at hand whenever a traveller draws nigh, for they invariably hide their heads beneath the nearest covert. Indeed, so invariably are poultry and bacon visitants at an Illinois table, that the story may be true, that the first inquiry made of the guest by the village landlord is the following: "Well, stran-ger, what'll ye take: wheat-bread and chicken fixens, or corn-bread and common doins?" by the latter expressive and elegant soubriquet being signified bacon. Breakfast being over, my foot was once more in the stirrup. The old man accompanied me to the gateway, and shaking my hand in a boisterous agony of good-nature, pressed me to visit him again when he was not drunk. I had proceeded but a few steps on my way when I heard his voice calling after me, and turned my head. "Stran-ger! I say, stran-ger! what do you reckon of sending this young Jack Stewart to Congress?" "Oh, he'll answer." "Well, and that's what I'm a going to vote; and there's a heap o' people always thinks like old Jim does; and that's what made 'em get me groggy last night." I could not but commiserate this old man as I pursued my journey, reflecting on what had passed. He was evidently no common toper; for some of his remarks evinced a keenness of observation, and a depth and shrewdness of thought, which even the withering blight of drunkenness had not completely deadened; and which, with other habits and other circumstances, might have placed him far above the beck and nod of every demagogue. Decatur, Ill. XXIX. "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where !" Measure for Measure. "Plains immense, interminable meads, And vast savannas, where the wand'ring eye, THOMSON. "Ye shall have miracles; ay, sound ones too, "Call in the barber! If the tale be long, MOORE. He'll cut it short, I trust." MIDDLETON. * THERE are few sentiments of that great man Benjamin Franklin for which he is more to be revered than for those respecting the burial-place of the departed. The graveyard is, and should ever be deemed, a holy spot; consecrated, not by the cold formalities of unmeaning ceremony, but by the solemn sacredness of the heart. Who that has committed to earth's cold bosom the relics of one dearer, perchance, than existence, can ever after pass the burial-ground with a careless heart. There is nothing which more painfully jars upon my own feelings-if I may except that wanton desecration of God's sanctuary in some sections of our land * "I will never, if possible, pass a night in any place where the graveyard is neglected." Franklin has no monument ! for a public commitia-than to see the graveyard slighted and abused. It is like wounding the memory of a buried friend. And yet it is an assertion which cannot be refuted, that, notwithstanding the reverence which, as a people, we have failed not to manifest for the memory of our dead, the same delicate regard and obsequy is not with us observed in the sacred rites as among the inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere. If, indeed, we may be permitted to gather up an opinion from circumstances of daily notoriety, it would seem that the plat of ground appropriated as a cemetery in many of the villages of our land was devoted to this most holy of purposes solely because useless for every other; as if, after seizing upon every spot for the benefit of the living, this last poor remnant was reluctantly yielded as a resting-place for the departed. And thus has it happened that most of the burialgrounds of our land have either been located in a region so lone and solitary, "You scarce would start to meet a spirit there," or they have been thrust out into the very midst of business, strife, and contention; amid the glare of sunshine, noise, and dust; "the gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day," with hardly a wall of stones to protect them from the inroads of unruly brutes or brutish men. It is as if the rites of sepulture were refused, and the poor boon of a resting-place in the bosom of our common mother denied to her offspring; as if, in our avarice of soul, we grudged even the last narrow house destined for all; and |