beg parsneps all winter, rather than vary from a superstitious and foolish notion of your grandmother!" "Ichabod, my son," said goody Slipshod, "never dig your parsneps in the fall. Depend upon it, you'll never prosper, Ichabod, if you vary from the good old rules of your grandfather, Catnip. You can borrow once in a while from Squire D. and so pay in the spring. That is the safest, my son." Fudge, fudge! Let fools enjoy their folly, and we 'll enjoy our parsneps and pot luck. Dig them about the last of November. Keep them in a cool cellar or out house, covered with dry sand or sods. They will be sweet and excellent food for man or beast. They require a deep, rich, mellow, and rather a sandy soil to be sweetest. (January, 1830.)

[TAXES ARE HIGH.]

My old friends and worthy patrons, it is pleasant once more to come among you, and to salute you with the cordiality of long-established friendship. Toil and care, and occasional perplexities, may wrinkle our brows and grizzle our locks, but our employment never tends to sour our tempers or cause any uncouth greetings. We drive our teams with merry hearts, and every thing pertaining to our occupation inculcates a spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving. In the sweat of the brow, to be sure, we toil for the pittance which Providence awards to industry; but this labour and exercise also bring health of both body and mind. When winter, with its iron jaws, clinches upon the face of nature, shuts every pore, and arrests the process of vegetation, we are not without our innocent employments and rational enjoyments. We sit not in moping melancholy, growling and snarling, like angry mastiffs, at the prosperity of industrious neighbours; neither do we churlishly retort to a goodnatured and gentle salute of "How fare ye, Mr. Ploughbeam?" We indeed would use the whole passing world, as well as ourselves, without abuse; knowing that in a little while we must depart. Why then should we not try to be happy? "Ah, well," says old Pinchback, "you preach curiously, but taxes are darn'd high." (January, 1832.)

[THE CATTLE SHOW.]

This is the month for cattle shows, and other agricultural exhibitions - Premiums are offered by various societies for the greatest crops; the best stock, and the best domestic manufactures, and thousands are pulling away for the prize, with all their might.

The great Bull of Farmer Lumpkins is a nosuch !

Peter Nibble has raised a monstrous field of white beans! Jo Lucky's acre of corn has seven stout ears to the stalk! Dolly Dilligence has outstript all in the bonnet line! Tabitha Twistem's hearth rug is up to all Market-street! The Linsey-Woolsey Manufacturing Company have made the finest piece of satinet that ever mortals set eyes on!

There is the widow Clacket's heifer, she is to be driven ! And, O, if you could only see 'Squire Trulliber's great boar! They say it is as big as a full grown rhinoceros !

Huzza, huzza for the premiums! Here's to the girl that can best darn a stocking, and to the lad that shall raise the biggest pumpkin! (October, 1824.)

[THE BAKER.]

Hark! 't is the jingle of the baker's bells. Hot bread, who buys? Have a care now, Mr. Sweetmouth, how you let this bill. run up. Wheat loaves, gingerbread, hot buns and seed-cakesthese are all very clever. But there is my aunt Sarah's brown bread, sweet, pleasant and wholesome; don't give it up for a cartload of muffins and jumbles. There is no discount on my aunt Sarah's cooking; she is the personification of neatness and nicety. Give me a plate of her nutcakes in preference to all the sweetmeats of the city. It has become somewhat fashionable to cast off old Rye-and-Indian for Genesee, Howard-street, &c.—also to give up heating the oven. I imagine that this change is vastly convenient for the shoe-peggers. "Tell the baker he may leave us half a dozen of his three cent biscuit," said Mrs. Crispin. Now

three times six are eighteen, and eighteen times 365 are $65.70 — whew! This will never do. In our haste to get rich, we must look at both ends of the railcut. Bread is denominated the staff of life, the main supporting food; but this so important article may, as well as a whistle, come too dear. Let your good wife, then, have her own hands in the kneading trough, nor heed too much the morning music of the baker's boy. (May, 1837.)

In 1813 the whole of the Farmer's Calendar for three months (October to December) is occupied by a continuous narrative sketch:

My neighbor Freeport had a knack at telling a story, cracking a joke and singing a song, and these talents made him a favourite of his townsmen. Every town meeting and training was sure to gather round him a crowd of jovial fellows, and my neighbour pretty soon added to his other acquisitions that of handsomely swigging a glass of grog. The demands for stories, jokes and songs encreased with the reward he received for them; and Freeport had not a heart to refuse either, till the tavern became his common resort. But while Freeport was so musical at the tavern his affairs got out of tune at home. His wife took a high pitch, and often gave him an unwelcome solo. Her stories had much of pith, and her sarcasms were of the keenest sort. She insisted that their affairs were going to rack and ruin. Sometimes the neighbour's cattle had broken into the corn-the rye had been ruined by laying out in the storm the hogs had broken in and rooted up the garden- the hay was half lost for want of attention the fences were broken down, &c. &c. And then the children

(October.)

Alas! the poor children were shoeless, coatless and heartless; for they had become the scoff and sport of their little companions by reason of their father's neglect to provide them with decent and comfortable apparel. They were unable to read, for they had no books. The sheep-here the poor woman sorely wept

were sold by the collector to pay taxes. So there was no chance for any wool to knit the children's stockings. No flax

had been raised, and of course they could have no shirts. To hear all this and ten times more was not very welcome to the ears of Freeport, whose heart was naturally tender and humane, so to get rid of it, he used to return to the tavern like a sow to her wallowing. His shop bills run up fast, while his character was running down. In this way he went on about two years, till old Scrapewell and Screwpenny got his farm; for all this time these usurers had been lending him money, and thus encouraging him to pursue this dreadful course. (November.)

Old Capt. Gripe also came in for a share of poor Freeport's estate; and there was Plunket, the cobler, he had lent him nine pence several times and now had cobbled it up to a court demand. Bob Raikins had swapped watches with him, and came in for the boot. The widow Nippet had lent him her mare twice to mill and once to a funeral, and had sold the boys an old tow jacket for a peck of whortleberries, and also given them a mess of turnips, and so she made out her account and got a writ. Tom Teazer, well known at the grog shops for a dabster at shoemaker loo, old Jeremiah Jenkins, the Jew, Stephen Staball, the butcher, and all the village moon-cursers came in for their portion of the wreck. So poor Freeport gave up vessel and cargo to these land pirates, sent his disconsolate wife again to her father with one of their babes, the rest were provided for by the town; and as for himself, miserable wretch, he became an outcast, a vagabond, and died drunk in the highway! (December.)

There is undeniable merit in this unpretentious narrative. It is somewhat crude, to be sure, but any attempt at polish would have defeated the author's purpose. The tragedy is humble, and even sordid, but it is complete and unsparing; it moves forward pitilessly to the bitter end with the steadiness of fate. Some of the details are hardly susceptible of improvement. The matter-of-fact brutality of poor Freeport's petty creditors is a fine piece of vigorous realism. What could be better in its way than the single brief sentence which pillories the village sharper: "Bob

Raikins had swapped watches with him, and came in for the boot"! It is a masterpiece of suggestive reticence.

The secret of Mr. Thomas's success in this little story is easy to discover: he was not trying to be "literary "; he was writing of what he had seen and known. The contrast is striking between the Tragedy of Neighbor Freeport, hidden away in the Farmer's Calendar, and the attempts at formal story-writing familiar to the student of American letters in the columns of the literary journals of the time. One or two points in the sketch may require a word of comment. "Shoemaker loo" was a round game at cards. How it differed from ordinary loo does not appear. "Moon-curser" is not in the dictionaries, but it ought to be, for it is a highly picturesque and imaginative word. A moon-curser is a wrecker. Of that there is no doubt, for the term is still in use on Cape Cod, and probably elsewhere. Its origin is conjectural, but admits of little doubt. The old-time wrecker was not an angel of mercy. To him, as to the witches in Macbeth, fair was foul and foul was fair. Darkness and storm were his opportunities, and he cursed the moon, whose light deprived him of his chance for plunder. Another application of the term may be seen in Richard Head's Canting Academy, 1673:

The Moon Curser is generally taken for any Link-Boy; but particularly he is one that waits at some Corner of Lincolns-InnFields with a Link in his hand, who under the pretence of Lighting you over the Fields, being late and few stiring, shall light you into a Pack of Rogues that wait for the comming of this Setter, and so they will all joyne in the Robbery.

Some of these were found to be Labourers so called, such who wrought all day in the Ruins of the City and were paid by their Master Workmen, and at night found an easier way to pay themselves by lying in the Ruins, and as they saw occasion would drag in people into Vaults and Cellars and there rob them.1

1 P. IOI.