"Now," said Mrs. Manners, after she had folded up the paper, and put it carefully away in a drawer of the desk, "now, there's your oath in black and white, so that some future day, if necessary, we may know just what it calls for. On my part, I intend to do all that I can to make Lucy perform what is therein required of her to the very letter.”

If she will," said the Colonel, glancing towards the bed, "there aint nothin' I won't do for her."

"I want you to promise, then,” said his wife, "that if she conforms to what was written on that paper, as I shall try to make her, you'll forgive her for what's happened to-night; and though you may yourself be sorry for having compelled her to marry her cousin, you'll not blame her for her strict observance."

"Promise! of course I do," cried the Colonel.

in each eye. The old gentleman held out his arms, and Lucy put hers about his neck. He kissed her wet cheek, and smoothed down her disordered curls. "Love will come with the babies, sissie," said he; whereat Lucy burst out crying again, and was led off up stairs to her own chamber by her mother, sobbing with redoubled vehe

mence.

"By George!" said the Colonel, talking to himself, after the women had got out of hearing. "By George!" said he, blowing his nose, and nodding his head in a positive manner; "there's nothin' like bein' firm and decided when you've got women to deal with. I vow I didn't expect, one spell, that Lucy would ha' gi'n up so quick and easy; for she's gritty as buckwheat bran when she gets her Ebenezer up; and as for her mother, really, I was afeared she'd take up on her side agin me, and there'd be the Old Nick to pay. I'm actilly tempted to tell Axy how it came out arter I put my foot down, jest to shut her mouth when she says that Betsey leads me by the nose, and ollers makes me do jest as she wants to have me. I'm the head of my own family yet, I guess."

WE

E always go to the country of a Fourth of July. We do so from a sense of duty. A man who sits twelve hours a day in his counting-house, ought to take one day in a year for recreation.

Our usual resort is Jehosaphat, a beautiful village of Long Island-the Long Islanders affect scriptural names, you know-which combines the maritime and the rural in graceful proportions; the staple of its productions being corn and clams,-the one the finest flower of the land, and the other the richest gem of the sea. Corn, when manufactured into whisky, and clams, baked in their own liquor under the sand, are the meat and drink of the inhabitants, who are duly grateful that. Providence has cast their lot in a very

pleasant place. You get to Jehosaphat by that stupendous specimen of American enterprise-the Long Island railroad-on which the travel, especially during the whole of the 3d of July, is so immense, that every gentleman is obliged to stand up in the passages, or on the platforms, to make room for the ladies. It is true that the Company have a whole year's notice that there will be an unusual crowd on that day; but a whole year is not enough to enable them to accommodate the multitude who rush out of the city by this favorite mode of conveyance. The dividends of the road, we suspect, are, on that day at least, enormous.

The last time that we went to Jehosaphat was on the Fourth of July, 1855, when Mr. Pepperage delivered the annual

oration.* He was a new comer there, and his fellow-citizens had selected him for this high and important function, not as a compliment to his abilities and character, but to discover who and what he was. Where he had come from, or his business, nobody knew, nor did he care to tell. He was, in fact, a remarkably silent man, of grave and unsocial deportment, who went to the post-office, at ten o'clock precisely, each morning, for his Tribune, and after that was not seen for the rest of the day. All the gossips had speculated about his condition and pedigree until they had nearly broken their weasands, but without coming to any satisfactory result. One of them, indeed, had gone so far as to ask him "point blank to his face," who he was, when he stared confusedly for a while, then laughed, and finally turned on his heels.

The glorious day, the immortal Fourth, was ushered in, if we may be allowed so novel an expression, with the ringing of the bell and the firing of a cannon. Little boys exploded several crackers in the street, a squad of overgrown, larger lads shot off a horse-pistol; a farmer, with his wife and three daughters dressed in white, rode about in their farm-wagon; a couple of negroes pitched pennies in the shadow of a wood-shed, and the starspangled banner drooped triumphantly from the top of the liberty-pole. It was as hot as griddle-cakes, of course, and the majority of the free and independent citizens appeared in their shirt-sleeves.

The only exceptions were two dozen persons who had the honor to belong to Company A, division 1, of the second battalion of the Jehosaphat Indefensibles. These having been dressed, from an early hour in the morning, in a heavy blue cloth coat and black leather hat, and carrying about fifty pounds of matchlock, buttons and feathers, looked distressed even before the drum had beaten the call to parade. Their faces were as red and wet as a lobster just taken from the kettle; while their bodies were as limp as washed rags. But the first strains of the inspiring martial music, consisting entirely of a base drum and a willow fife, put mettle into their limbs,

and they gathered in front of the hotel, with all the ardor of veteran warriors. Captain Joe Mott was officer of the day, and he performed prodigies in getting his men into line. ""Tention, the hull," he cried, with a voice like that of the German Emperor who could be heard from one end of his army to the other "Companee! Fall in!-Dress!"

But as a considerable number of the "compance" had begun quite early to fortify themselves against any premature application of the Maine Law, their "dress" did not answer, in every respect, to the definition of a mathematical line. Compance!" shouted Captain Joe, once more ""Tention! Eyes right!dress!" and again, after considerable movement, the line represented Hogarth's line of beauty rather more than any other line.

Captain Joe strode up and down the front several times in the greatest perplexity, and finally exclaimed-"Now, sodgers, look-o'-here! I want you all to form in as straight a column as you can; with your backs to that are house, and your noses pintin' to the liberty-pole! Now, then-Companee!-'Tention the hull!-Eyes right!—Dress!”

It was an unhappy order the Captain had given; for, each man after pointing his nose to the pole, looked over his shoulder afterwards to see if his back was right, so that the greater part of them had the appearance of lay figures, with the heads set the wrong way.

"Very well," said Captain Joe Mott, seeing that he was not likely to get his men any nearer to a right line, ""Tention, the hull! Show'd ums!" and there was a general shaking of muskets.

"Music! For'd, march!" and the military moved off in procession, to the manifest admiration of the entire circle of spectators. The orator, with the reader of the Declaration and a clergyman, rode behind in a barouche, drawn by two steeds splendidly caparisoned in Dutch collars and sprigs of asparagus to keep off the flies.

Arrived at the church, the clergyman made a prayer. Mr. Zeph. Conover, the promising young lawyer of the place, read the Declaration, in a full, loud, round voice, and with a determination

a system inherited from the British two centuries ago, but they are not half as much slaves as the white serfs of Birmingham and Manchester! Are not their mouths ever full of possum-fat and hominy? Are they not dressed in the best tow-cloth half the year, while it is too hot to wear anything the other half? Do they not raise their own pig and chickens, and fish for 'cats' and snapping-turtles of Saturday nights? And have they not the Gospel statedly preached to them by one of their own number on the Sabbath day? Slaves, forsooth! why they are the happiest working people on the globe! Well would it be, friends and fellowcitizens, for the poor Irish bog-trotter, and the English coal-heavers, and the French sans-culottes, and the German eater of sour-crout, and the consumers of macaroni at Naples, if they could be as well fed and cared for as these objects of misguided and fanatical philanthropy! Well would it be for us, even, if we were always so sure of our rice and sweet-potatoes! The supreme and ultimate end of human existence being, as the Scriptures tell us, what we shall eat and wherewithal we shall be clothed,' the greatest and happiest of mortals are they whose mouths are stuffed with good fat bacon, and whose persons are ornamented with a red bandanna handkerchief!

“Besides, friends and fellow-citizens, -as those eminent philosophers Messrs. Nott and Gliddon inform us-it has not yet been proved that Africans are men! It is true that they look like men, that they are formed like men, that they talk like men, that they reason and feel like men, but appearances, you know, are fallacious. In spite of such superficial resemblances, the wellattested physical facts that they often have projecting jaws like monkeys, sometimes a flat foot like a goose, and always wool on their heads like sheep, are facts which admit of no reply. They show that we should at least hesitate in recognizing their claims to humanity. It would be an awful thing to mistake a monkey for a man, and, under that terrible delusion, to plunge four millions of inferior animals into all the refinements and delights of civilization! fancies shrink appalled from the consequences the streets of populous cities running red with pink-faced ba

Our

boons, and the domestic happiness of a thousand firesides wrecked by excess of ourang-outangs and ring-tailed apes!" -As the eloquent gentleman proceeded to unfold the outlines of this fearful picture, his voice was gradually drowned in the sobs and sighs of the female part of the audience, whose tender sensibilities were wrought up to a pitch of almost frantic excitement. He, therefore, magnanimously forbore to press the subject further.

"But," he remarked, "to change the theme, if there be any one so insane as to believe that we Americans fall short of the lofty and beautiful ideal of our fathers, let me point him to our liberal and magnanimous treatment of foreign immigrants. As our great maxim is that man is man,' we make our country emphatically the 'home of the exile and the asylum of the oppressed.' The half million refugees from European despotism, who annually come to us, we welcome with warm hugs and very open hands. They touch our country-and, we set 'em to work on the rail-road, at six shillings a day' They take part in our political life,and, instead of seeking to deprive them of the privilege, we often pay them for voting. But it may be questioned whether we have not, in this, reversed the true and patriotic process. Far be it from me to intimate that our political arrangements are not perfect in any respect: but, as the citizens of Athens, in the most flourishing period of their democracy, caused themselves to be paid out of the public treasury, for the discharge of their laborious duties in attending public assemblies, listening to the orators, talking politics, and monopolizing legislation: so it seems but just, considering how much more exacting our duties are in all these respects, that every native of the United States should go untaxed, and be supported at public expense. I say every native, because of the extraordinary merit of that class of citizens, in having got themselves born on this continent, and because it is clear that aliens, with their foreign manners and habits of thought, can never be made to understand the peculiarities of our institutions. Let me, therefore, suggest this proposal to the Hermetical Benevolent Societies, or those which, sealed at both ends, devote themselves so industriously to the good of themselves, and the public!"

-At this point in the discourse some disturbance was created by an Irishman, who cried Bravo," when several native and stalwart Jehosaphatians fell upon him, and, after beating his face into a semblance of raw beef-steak, ejected him from the window. As soon as the cheering, with which their prompt interference was greeted by the whole assembly, had subsided, the speaker resumed.

"Yes, my dearly-beloved friends and fellow-citizens, it is the glory of our institutions and our society, that every man is allowed to pursue his happiness in his own way. The impartial spirit of our laws, while it confers no privileges and suffers no monopolies, doesn't interfere materially with anybody.

"But not to waste your time, fellowcitizens, upon irrelevant topics, let me recur to more pleasing contemplations! Let me remind you of what, in your habitual modesty, you are so apt to forget-your sure and solid and stupendous greatness as a nation! Let me recall that distinguishing and consolatory fact, that your country covers already ar area of nearly four million square miles, and that it would be still bigger if the two oceans were filled in. Who shall say, in view of the accomplishments of modern enterprise, that it is not practicable to level the Apalachians and so obtain sufficient material for this purpose, whenever it shall be demanded by the increasing density of our population and be warranted by the price of lots? What were Greece and Rome, about which the historians keep up such a bother, compared to this? Why Greece, with all her pretensions to art and science, was only a little peninsula about twice the size of Long Island, and Rome, though she called herself, in her vainglorious pride, the Mistress of the Globe, was nothing more than a single city, situated on a river no deeper than one of our goose creeks! What, too, is England compared to us-that boastful and arrogant England, whose morning drum-beat,' as some one has ludicrously said, 'follows the sun in his course?' A narrow, misty, marshy, miserable coal pit, easily contained in a Virginia cornfield, and which you would have to look for with a telescope on an Illinois prairie!

"In respect to natural productions and national industry we have also every reason for exultation and pride. The display of those useful domestic crea

tures called Babies, at the recent exhi bition in the Great American Museum, exceeded everything of the kind ever before conceived. Why there were infants there, not twelve months old, so prosperous in fat that not a single feature of their innocent faces was distinguishable! There were American mothers there, who could throw threes far more easily than you could turn up double-sixes in a dice-box!

"Again, do they not slaughter more hogs in Cincinnati than in all the rest of the world? Do they not make better champagne at Newark than in France, or even in Broad street? What oysters are equal to the Blue Pointers of Downing, or in what region of the habitable world, barbarian or civilized, bond or free, are there canvas-back ducks like ours? Oh! my friends, I could weary your patience almost with agreeable statistics of this kind, and you ought to thank the beneficent Power, for the inconceivable greatness of your endowments and the overwhelming grandeur of your destinies!

"In the arts of peace, and in the deeds of war, you are equally distinguished. It was your happy lot to have produced Singer's sewing machine, the clipper ship Blue Thunder, Blake's fire-proof paint, the aboriginal mintjulep, the improved sherry cobbler, and the trotting-horse Fanny Fern, as well as the authoress of the same name alike the envy and admiration of mankind. In the department of the Fine Arts, your immortal Jackson and his horse, both standing on one hind leg, and the panorama of the Mississippi, painted on forty miles of canvas, cover you with renown. But, perhaps, the Washington National Monument will be considered by posterity as your most extraordinary performance. Composed of different sized stones from every part of the globe, and a few aerolites supposed to have been engendered in the moon, it also illustrates the peculiar architecture of every nation and age-from the Egyptian obelisk and the temple-cave of India to the wigwam of the red man and the corn-stalk orders of Western prairies. Indeed, that remarkable pile of stones (or bricks, were they?) once attempted on the plains of Shinar is the only edifice of history which can be compared to it, either in design or exe

cution.

"Then, again, your literature has