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Horace, finding it harder to support two than one, soon became tired of his new burden. He however, concealed the cause of his dissatisfaction from his wife, till she one day very plainly told him that she would shiver him alive, if he did not reveal the secret of his ill-humour. He, to tantalize her, replied that it was her sister he wanted and not her, and that with her, he never could live in peace. "Why not tell me this in time,” exclaimed the indignant Phillis, and forthwith started for the house of her sister and brother-in-law. This worthy couple, also, it seems, had had a little matrimonial jaring that morning, which rendered them the more ready to part, and Virgil declared his perfect willingness to swap wives with Horace. That the bargain might be ratified, they started for the house of the latter, but he, to their surprise, declared that he would have neither Phillis nor Flora; he was tired of matrimony; he would have no wife at all. This so vexed Virgil, and excited the indignation of the sisters, that they all three commenced a personal attack on Horace. He resisted, but would probably have been conquered, had it not been for Phillis, whose returning affections induced her to desert the enemy, and take the side of her husband. Seizing a boot-tree, she wielded it with such force as to bring Virgil to the ground. Soon afterwards the peace officers arrived and took them all into custody.

The magistrate ordered them to pay the costs, and go home and settle the matter among themselves, advising each of the men to rest content with his own wife.

XIV. MILLER rs. TOMPKINS.

[Commercial Advertiser. New-York.]

"The land I value not, but, in a matter of right,
I'd cavil with the devil for the ninth part of a hair!"

THIS was an action of trover and conversion, brought to recover the value of a certain goose, of which the plaintiff alleged that he was the owner, and which the aforesaid defendant surreptitiously, tortuously, unneighbourly, and without having the fear of 'squire Cunningham before his eyes, had taken, carried away, and to

his own use converted, out of his the said plaintiff's flock. We have not particularly examined the declaration in the case, and do not pretend to vouch for literal accuracy of phraseology. Damages claimed, seven shillings. The plaintiff identified his goose, by a good power of witnesses, and shewed particularly, that it had a slit between the outside and middle toe of her right foot. Defendant proved the same mark to be on his geese also; and then moreover, and that was enough, that he had six geese sometime ago; that he had but six geese now; that he ought to have six geese, and, slit or no slit, he would have six geese. The goose was finally produced on the spot, ushered into the presence of the court, from the mouth of a huge grey bag. It was a well mannered goose. She rolled up her sweet pewter eyes, "like a duck in thunder," most respectfully, on all around, and the court looked wise, and the plaintiff's lawyer looked wicked at the defendant's lawyer, as much as to say, "what think you of that, now?" Defendant's attorney, however, was too old a warrior to be taken by surprise, or give up the field upon a mere demonstration. With the ready resource of a veteran, he challenged his op ponent at once, to bring his client's gander, and the plaintiff's gander into court, and rest the whole cause, and the whole right and title to the aforesaid goose, upon the choice she should make of, from, and among the two said ganders, for her paramour; for every goose, concluded the learned counsel, has her partner and her flock.

"There swims no goose so grey, but soon or late,
"She finds some silly gander for her mate."

The plaintiff's counsel wisely declined the challenge. It was this same libertine gander of the defendant, he continued, that had seduced the plaintiff's goose from her" true lord," the plantiff's gander, at first, unless she had been forcibly taken away, as the declaration alleged; and besides, it was well known that geese, when depraved, like the Indians, by civilization, would wander from their own proper mates, on the 14th of February, every year; and about this time it was, he said,

that the witnessess proved the plaintiff's goose to have been missing. In the pure state of nature, though, "Ere the base laws of servitude began,

"When wild in woods the noble savage ran,"

this corruption of manners was not known among the feathered race-polygamy and incontinence were not even heard of; every goose had her gander, and had him for life, and the learned counsel knew it. Were that the condition of the goose in question, he would have no objection to rely upon the test proposed. This thunderbolt of natural history, completely staggered the learned counsel opposite. He made a "desperate rally," however, and "came in, in time," but evidently a "sufferer." His honour the judge, equally posed, reserved, as by the statute he has the right, four days for his opinion. The judgement of the court will be noted

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when given. Whoever "6 gets the cause,' we cannot but be reminded of a story told us in childhood:

"A fiddler. crossing a stream, his fiddle slipped out of its case and was lost in the water. Lamenting his loss when he came upon the shore, a bystander remarked, No, you have not lost your fiddle, don't you see there's your case in hand? O, be sure, replied, monsieur Crowder, I've got my case, but I've lost my fiddle." Ten dollars probably in counsel fees, five in costs, and the goose worth, by plaintiff's own demand, seven shillings!

XV. WESTERN WIT.

[Missouri Intelligencer.]

TO THE HONOURABLE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, THE PETITION OF THE UNDERSIGNED, RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH:

THAT your petitioner, a citizen of this state, and having its interest much at heart, finds himself, in common with others, deeply aggrieved and compelled to resort to your honourable bodies for redress.

Your petitioner is most thoroughly persuaded, that the honour of the state and the happiness of its citizens are staked on the decision that may be had in your deliberative wisdom, on the subject matter of his petition :

and therefore most humbly implores that an ear may be inclined to hear, and an arm extended to remove, the evils and nuisances of which he complains, in the speediest and most efficacious manner.

It is well known to your honourable bodies, that there are some among us who praise knowledge, and are endeavouring to exhaust the treasury, and torment the rising generation by the establishment and support of schools. God forbid that any countenance should be shown, by the law-makers of the land to the execrable purpose of teaching youth till they despise their fathers for lack of this same knowledge. Your petitioner humbly submits the following reasons to your legislative consideration, hoping that they may have their due weight in exploding the new-fangled notions of modern ages, on the subject of learning and improvement.

1. Knowledge is a source of vexation. "He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth trouble," saith the wise man. Our grandfather Adam, lived in happiness till, to acquire knowledge, he ate of the forbbiden tree, and ruined himself and his race. Doctors and lawyers are the excrescences, the fungi, of knowledge; and what is worse than the taking of pills and the unravelling of the labyrinths of the law? The acquisition of knowledge injures the constitution, weakens the body, shortens life, fills the mind with crotchets, lightens the purse, and converts your fat, good-natured, jolly man into a lean, pedantic scarecrow, that always talks by rule. What is there more troublesome and degrading in this free country, than to be subjected to the caprice and the rod of a pedagogue? To be called in from the streets and the prairies, from seeing the light, and breathing the breath of the pure heaven, to the dull monotony of a schoolroom, the eternal contemplation of some rascally spelling-book and grammar, whose authors may God confound.

2. Knowledge renders us insecure in our property and persons. My neighbour knows more than I; therefore, he cheats and abuses me. If we were on the same blessed level of ignorance, neither could have an advantage over the other. The shameful art of reading and writing has ruined thousands, who have not themselves

been possessed of it. What are all these artful rules and distinctions, and laws of civilized society, but the offspring of accursed knowledge and improvement ? They are so many traps, nets and gins, entangling and catching us whichever way we turn; and the learned, are like so many spiders, sitting on their webs, purposing to profit by the misfortunes of the poor devil, who should heedlessly be caught by their fine spun devices.

3. Knowledge is degrading. In acquiring it, we are under the necessity of relinquishing our freedom; and when we get it, we are converted from honest men into knaves. How much more noble and dignified it is to be above the petty details of science, and to support the character of lords of the creation, by despising all control. Your learned man is a mere artificial being. He has lost the real character of his species, being a compound of the fag-ends, scraps, fragments and habits of all who have gone before him. His body is a kind of substratum, in which meet together the conflicting absurdities of the whole world. His soul, if he has any, is like an old lumber-case, filled with the cast-off clothes of Confucius, Aristotle, and other blackguards of antiquity.

4. Knowledge is expensive. Heaven only knows what vast expensive sums are annually laid out for this worse than useless drug in the older nations. The peasant is ground in the dust, that some lord's son may learn the fooleries of a college. So far is this infatuation advanced, that nothing can be now done, without paying for the knowledge, which folly deems necessary to its accomplishment. Your honourable bodies know that we, your constituents, do actually pay you individually, for the superiour knowledge which you are wickedly and nefariously supposed to possess.

5. Knowledge is misery. May God's curse light on all, who first invented the delusion, and the tormenting perplexities of all science besiege the brain of him, who shall undertake to defend it. Your petitioner, in common with other good and worthy citizens, is, at this very moment, writhing under the agonies of knowledge. They know that the " times are hard," that money is scarce,

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