THE FORTUNE HUNTER; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF A MAN ABOUT TOWN. A NOVEL OF NEW YORK SOCIETY. BY MRS. HELEN BERKLEY. The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted-they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. BYRON. New-York: J. WINCHESTER, NEW WORLD PRESS, 30 ANN STREET. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York, in the year of our Lord 1844, by J. WINCHESTER. "TRY a wing of this partridge, Ellery? these are the first of the season. ao n't eat." You "Thank you; I prefer discussing this vol au vent, a favorite dish of mine, by the way. I dare say Allsop will do justice to your delicate partridges." "Certainly, my dear fellow; nothing like a partridge, prepared by one of these French cooks. Food for the gods, decidedly: give me half of one." Three young men were seated round a table, spread with epicurean viands, in one of the private rooms of Delmonico's sumptuous establishment. I said young men; but the term could only be applied par complaisance to the eldest, Mr. Joseph Ellery; or it should be considered, in the application, as descriptive rather of his appearance than years. The first leaf of his worthy father's family bible would probably have proclaimed that he had seen the ripe maturity of forty, in days long past; but as that tell-tale page had been carefully destroyed-as the ladies pronounced Mr. Ellery an accomplished beau, and he was in the habit of designating himself as a garçon, and, more than this, as the united skill of Grandjean, and Parmley, and Derby, and Tryon had been called into action to preserve the bloom of his youth unimpaired, I was only following the example of the fashionable world in ranking him with young men. The gentleman on his left, whom he addressed as Allsop, was one of that large class of "young men about town," whose characters are the most difficult to draw because there are no landmarks at which you can begin: inoffensive creatures, who seek for pleasure wherever they can find it, and harm nobody so much as themselves. You may describe their well-cut coats, their slender canes, the moustaches they are daily supplicating to give expression to their lips, the color of their |