heart into the pleasures of home and friends around her. I shall venture to quote a single passage from a letter on this subject, addressed to me by her uncle. Speaking of his visit above alluded to, he says:

"One day, after we had been talking as usual of America and her American relations, she excused herself to me for a short time, that she might go to her room and write a letter to the convent. She was gone from me much longer than I had expected, and on her return I said to her:

"You must have been writing a long letter, if I may judge by the time you have been about it?' "Yes,' was her reply; but I have not been writing all the while; I have been praying.'

"Indeed! Do you pray often?'

"Yes-and even more often here than when I am at the convent.'

"Why so?'

"I fear, my dear uncle, that my affection for you will attach me too much to earth.'"

How strange, how affecting are the vicissitudes of life as we read them in the intimate personal histories of homes and hearts! The direct descendants of the Puritan minister of Ridgefield-the one a mother, blending her name, her lineage, and her language, in the annals of a foreign land; the other, a devotee, seeking in the seclusion of her cell-and perhaps not altogether in vain-"that peace which the world can not give!"

LETTER XIX.

Mat Olmstead, the Town Wit-The Salamander Hat-The Great Eclipse -Sharp Logic-Lieutenant Smith, the Town Philosopher-The Purchase of Louisiana-Lewis and Clarke's Exploring Expedition-The Great Meteor-Hamilton and Burr-The Leopard and the Chesapeake— Fulton's Steamboats-Granther Baldwin, the Village Miser-Surah Bishop, the Hermitess.

MY DEAR C******

Matthew Olmstead, or Mat Olmstead, as he was usually called, was a day laborer, and though his speciality was the laying of stone fences, he was equally adroit at hoeing corn, mowing, and farm-work in general. He was rather short and thick-set, with a long nose, a little bulbous in his latter days-with a ruddy complexion, and a mouth shutting like a pair of nippers the lips having an oblique dip to the left, giving a keen and mischievous expression to his face, qualified, however, by more of mirth than malice. This feature was indicative of his mind and character, for he was sharp in speech, and affected a crisp, biting brevity, called dry wit. He had also a turn for practical jokes, and a great many of these were told of him, to which, perhaps, he had no historical claim. The following is one of them, and is illustrative of his manner, even if it originated elsewhere.

On a cold stormy day in December-as I received the tale--a man chanced to come into the bar-room VOL. I.--12

of Keeler's tavern, where Mat Olmstead and several of his companions were lounging. The stranger had on a new hat of the latest fashion, and still shining with the gloss of the iron. He seemed conscious of his dignity, and carried his head in such a manner as to invite attention to it. Mat's knowing eye immediately detected the weakness of the stranger; so he approached him, and said—

"What a very nice hat you've got on. Pray who made it ?"

"Oh, it came from New York," was the reply. "Well, let me take it," said Mat.

The stranger took it off his head, gingerly, and handed it to him.

"It is a wonderful nice hat," said Matthew; "and I see it's a real salamander !"

"Salamander ?" said the other.

"What's that?"

"Why a real salamander hat won't burn!"

"No? I never heard of that before: I don't be

lieve it's one of that kind."

"Sartain sure; I'll bet you a mug of flip of it." "Well, I'll stand you!"

"Done: now I'll just put it under the fore-stick?" "Well."

It being thus arranged, Mat put the hat under the fore-stick into a glowing mass of coals. In an instant it took fire, collapsed, and rolled into a black, crumpled mass of cinders.

"I du declare," said Mat Olmstead, affecting great

astonishment "it ain't a salamander hat arter all. Well; I'll pay the flip!"

Yet wit is not always wisdom. Keen as this man was as to things immediately before him, he was of narrow understanding. He seemed not to possess the faculty of reasoning beyond his senses. He never

would admit that the sun was fixed, and that the world turned round. In an argument upon this point before an audience of his class, he would have floored Sir John Herschel or Lord Rosse by his homely but pointed ridicule.

I remember that when the great solar eclipse of 1806 was approaching, he with two other men were at work in one of our fields, not far from the house. The eclipse was to begin at ten or eleven o'clock, and my father sent an invitation to the workmen to come up and observe it through some pieces of smoked glass. They came, though Mat ridiculed the idea of an eclipse -not but the thing might happen-but it was idle to suppose it could be foretold. While they were waiting and watching for the great event, my father explained that the light of the sun upon the earth was to be interrupted by the intrusion of the moon, and that this was to produce a transient night upon the scene around us.

Mat laughed with that low scoffing chuckle, with which a woodchuck, safe in his rocky den, replies to the bark of a besieging dog.

"So you don't believe this ?" said my father.

"No," said Mat, shaking his head, and bringing his lips obliquely together, like the blades of a pair of shears. "I don't believe a word of it.

son Goodrich, that the sun is fixed, and

"Yes, I say so."

You say, Par

don't move ?"

"Well didn't you preach last Sunday out of the 10th chapter of Joshua ?"

"Yes."

"And didn't you tell us that Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still ?"

"Yes."

"Well: what was the use of telling the sun to stand still if it never moved?"

This was a dead shot, especially at a parson, and in the presence of an audience inclined, from the fellowship of ignorance, to receive the argument. Being thus successful, Mat went on.

แ

"Now, Parson Goodrich, let's try it agin. turn a thing that's got water in it bottom up, ter'll run out, won't it?"

"No doubt."

If you

the wa

"If the world turns round, then, your well will be turned bottom up, and the water'll run out!"

At this point my father applied his eye to the sun through a piece of smoked glass. The eclipse had begun; a small piece was evidently cut off from the rim. My father stated the fact, and the company around looked through the glass and saw that it was so. Mat Olmstead, however, sturdily refused to try it,