THE TRUE HISTORY OF ALCIBIADES SCRIBO

CONTRIBUTOR, CONCOCTOR, ET CETERA

THE TRUE HISTORY OF ALCIBIADES SCRIBO,

CONTRIBUTOR, CONCOCTOR, ET CETERA.

CHAPTER I.

DUM IN FIERI.

As I happen to be the hero of my own story, I will begin according to the most approved method of hatching flash novels. With the least possible pittance of egotism, I will sketch the portrait of myself.

Let the imaginative reader figure out in his brain a tall, slender, languid, feminine-looking form, with a rich profusion of coarse reddish hair, tortured by hot irons and a world of pains into curls, or, more properly, frizzle; a pale transparency of complexion, darkish under the eye; eyes of blue and white, with dilating pupils; a scattered crop of moustache, and whiskers of indeterminate hue; teeth of ivory, and lips of sunny coral-lips always smiling, to show the ivory teeth; small snowy hands, unutterably delicate; and feet that wear number six. If the reader has figured all this with the requisite force and fire of imagination, then he must have quite a vivid and favorable idea of Alcibiades Scribo that is to say, myself.

This much may suffice for my personnel. Of my intellectual and moral material, modesty forbids me to speak; and, besides, as I may hopefully trust, that will become demonstratively evident in the sequel of the story. I may state, however, without incurring the charge of obtrusive vanity, that my brain has long been overburdened with a prodigious load of mathesis and metaphysique. As a specimen of this heavy incubus, you may take, instar omnium, the following: I have in my mind's eye, as well as written out in faultless chirography, all ready for the press, fifty different methods of squaring the circle, and a hundred sliding-scales, for the measurement of the infinite; besides three dozen theorems for the reduction of the transcendental to the status of human intelligibility!

Such was the capital stock with which I started my literary life-trade, and I deem it more than enough to render the name of Alcibiades Scribo an illustrious watch-word of glory among the nations to the end of the earth-a hereditament of brilliant renown, and imperishable to all posterity. But unfortunately for my aspirations winging their flight into the far future, unfortunately for my appetite clamorously demanding a few slices out of the pressing present, it so chanced that my ponderous supply both of antiquated and new-fangled lore, met with no corresponding demand in the book-market of New Orleans, the city where I first had the honor of telluric vivification. All my acute quadratures of the circle would not so much as cut me a crust of bread, though I protested, hungrily, my willingness to accept it buttered on one side only, and spread thin as hoarfrost at that!

Here, then, was a perilous problem at the very outset of my valiant career-a problem utterly insolvable by any of the prescribed formula in algebra or the higher fluxions. It was to get a quantity of meat betwixt my ivory grinders sufficient to egnate the sum total of gastric fluid in my stomach. I gauged the infinite, stewed down the transcendental to the sirrup of nectar, pumped the well of metaphysics dry, but all would not do: I could not breakfast on rainbows, dine on the geometry of sunbeams, or make a hearty supper out of the shadows of moonshine; and as a natural result, I was in great danger of becoming a shadow myself. At length, the thought struck me that, perhaps, I had mistaken my vocation, since I had always been thoroughly persuaded that nature produces no abortions, never creates one of her children to starve, if they will but follow the bent and curvature of his genius. Determining to test the matter as to what I was fitted for, by some infallible means, and my coat being excessively seedy, and consequently ripe for such an operation, I planted it in the windows of a pawnbroker's shop, and realized the round sum of fifty cents.

With this, I hastened to the office of Doctor Powell, the famous South-western phrenologist, and boldly asked him to run his fingers over, my cranial bumps, and pronounce what I was made for! "Read those organs like a book," I exclaimed, "and then tell me what the whole volume is worth!"

"As the print is rather small," remarked the Doctor, "I will put on my finest glasses." He did so, and proceeded to the examination which was to decide the course of my future destiny.

As I had only demanded a general result, he worked away on my head, for the most part in silence, muttering, now and then, involuntary exclamations, as some strong point arrested his attention.

I could hear the worthy and erudite professor whisper, as if in soliloquy: "Powers of external perception feeble! Comparison enormous! Causality miserably deficient! Fancy large, but true imagination little! Imitation immense, and wonder boundless—would make a glorious humbug! The pole-organ, self-esteem, infinite. Combativeness, precarious! Conscientiousness totally minus!"

My agony was indescribable till the analyst paused, and I inquired with tremulous lips: “Well, Doctor, speak it out; what am I good for?" I was afraid he would answer, "nothing."

"But he replied, with a smile: "My dear fellow, nature intended you for a magnificent humbug. Go to New-York, or Bostonz—turn reformer; exchange all the crotchets within that cranium for geld, and your fortune is made."

"I have no money to pay my passage," I rejoined with a sigh. "Never mind," said the Doctor; I will lend you fifty dollars, and although I am certain never to get it back again, I can afford to lose that much for the benefit of such an experiment in science."

Accordingly, my new friend counted me out the money necessary to consummate my passage to the north; gave me a letter to the editor of "The Omni-Versus," in New-York, and shaking a cordial farewell on my not ungrateful hand, enjoined me to write him monthly reports detailing minutely the success of my enterprise. I took a berth on board of the brig Fairy Wave, and propitious winds soon wafted me into the desired haven.

I hurried ashore, and lost no time in presenting my epistle of introduction at the office of the Omni-Versus. Unfortunately, however, the editor was just then making the tour of New-England, lecturing for the benefit of the blacks of Senegambia. This was the more to be regretted, as I learned that the pages of the Omni-Versus were devoted exclusively to the connection of the numerous errata, which the Deity, it was believed, had perpetrated in stereotyping the Book of Nature. Such a work of emendation, I fancied was exactly suited to my superlative talents; but the editor was absent, and the foreman had no authority to employ me. Accordingly, I was about to retire in despair. when one of the imps, probably moved to pity by the lugubrious, ravenous expression of my countenance, interposed the opportune advice to offer my services as literatus to "The Daily Patent Puffer," one of the wealthiest periodicals in the city of New-York.

Five minutes afterwards, I found myself face to face with the redoubtable Patent Puffer. He was a curt, burly, middle-aged man, with a dull, leaden eye, but a sharp, snappish voice. My heart got loose from its place, flew up into my throat, and choked me, as I gesticulated half a hundred superfluous bows, without finding the nerve to utter a single word.

"What do you want, young man?" snarled Puffer, with an ominous glare in his leaden-colored orbs.

"I am a literatus, and have some manuscripts to dispose of," I faltered, fumbling at the same time desperately among the papers in my pocket.

"What is your name?" Puffer interrogated in a milder snarl. "Alcibiades Scribo, at your service." The enunciation of my own name reassured me. I felt my figure suddenly stretch to the extent of full three inches in perpendicular height.

"Hum!" ejaculated Puffer, "let me see your manuscripts." I handed him, at a venture, my fiftieth quadrature of the circle. glanced his eye rapidly over my darling chef-d'œuvre in geometry, and his surly look changed to one of ineffable scorn. "How do you like it?" I asked, in a voice dying with suspense.

"It is good for culinary conveniences, and nothing else!" was his brutal answer; "have you no more?"

I presented my sliding-scale for the measurement of the infinite; he dashed through it, like a mad race-horse, helter-skelter, and remarked: "This will do for post-culinary purposes!"

I then permitted all my hopes of salvation on my grand theorem, for the reduction of the transcendental to the status of human intelligibility. "O, this is nauseating stuff," Puffer almost howled, as he pushed the unlucky manuscripts towards me with a finger. I seized my hat with a groan of hungry agony, when my tormentor interrupted my departure: "You have a fine flowing style-why do you not devote your ready pen to subjects of practical utility."

"I would be most happy to do so," I replied, eagerly catching at the suggestion, as a drowning sailor catches at a rope of the wreck: "Yes," I continued; "only tell me what you want, and I'll dispatch it with a velocity to eclipse time, distance lightning, and astound steam-engines; I write with amazing speed, because I never stop to think, but dash ahead by the process of spontaneous intuition!"

My enthusiasm seemed to delight the editor very much; the lead of his eye sparkled like pinchbeck, and in tones mellow and melting as honey, he declared: "I will give you a capital job. My European correspondent has lately received a terrible cow-hiding, from the effects of which, he is at present hors du combat: you shall take his place."

"Your European correspondent?" I exclaimed, in the bewilderment of ignorant surprise.

"Yes, you shall write me letters political, critical, and miscellaneous, from Europe, with epistles of occasional excursions to Africa, Asia, and the isles of Oceanica."

My astonishment increased. "Why, it will consume half a lifetime to make the tour!" I rejoined, with a cold shudder.

"Make the tour! I don't mean to pay you for making any such tour," snarled Patent-Puffer.

"Then, how the devil am I to write the letters ?"

"Shut yourself up in your own room; call it, if you like, London, Paris, or Vienna; refer to Malte Brun and the foreign journals, for indefinite data, and you must be a born fool if you cannot quickly forge the most brilliant correspondence out of the fire and furor of your seething brain!"

"O, now I understand!" I cried, transported with the marvellous ingenuity of the idea; and we forthwith concluded the bargain at five dollars per letter.

I labored in Europe all the following night, and the next morning, carried six long "communications from abroad," to the office of the Patent-Puffer. Being stuffed thickly with German and French words, and containing especially the mellifluent term, emcute," three score and ten times, my achievement gave boundless satisfaction to the editor; he paid me down in yellow gold, and confirmed my own cherished opinion of my powers by assuring me, that I was a great genius!

The

In returning to my garret, I did not walk, or touch the bare, lowlying earth. I glided-floated on wings; flew in starry azure. golden gates of fortune and everlasting fame seem suddenly to have opened before me. I would be a Sue, a Bulwer, a Byron; I would rush on the broad pinions of the Patent-Puffer to the end of the world; I would sweep the arc of the most distant posterity! Such were the dreams of the "Home" correspondent from Europe.

But this was only the first fruit of my hasty tree of renown. The letters of Alcibiades Scribo, dated from parts unknown, continued to appear daily in the closely crowded columns of the Puffer, effecting a most tremendous sensation. The successive publications, as to emeutes," insurrections, earthquakes, volcanic erruptions, hurricanes of war, and whirlwinds of diplomacy, fell startling on the ear of the great city, like one perpetual roll of heavy artillery. The impression was heightened by a number of brief notes from anonymous communicators, expressing wonder and delight at Scribo's epistles. These light missiles were hurled into the pages of the Puffer by the pen of your humble servant, Monsieur Scribo himself! It was a ruse de guerre to insure notoriety. O, Scribo, Scribo! those were golden days never to be forgotten! Thou doest well, Scribo, to treasure them up in the "amber of memory" now, since all thou hast left of them is their memory alone!

But a storm at length came, and from a most unexpected quarter of the sky. I went one morning, as usual, to carry my batch of foreign letters, when, to my horror and dismay, I perceived, on entrance, a frightful frown scowling in the grey brows of the Patent-Puffer!"

"You need not bring any more of your idiotic effusions to this office," he snarled, furiously waving me away with his hand.

"Why? what's the matter now?" I asked, gasping for breath. "Look here!" he shouted, holding up before my stupified optics, a paragraph in that day's paper. The paragraph was headed in large capitals:-A FRESH EMEUTE IN HELL!"

"Isn't that your work, you brainless blockhead?" cried Puffer, grinding his teeth in a paroxysm of impotent rage. That," he proceeded, will lose me five thousand subscribers; and besides, it has spoiled the forgery of foreign correspondence forever. It has torn out by the roots the right wing of the Patent-Puffer, and reduced it to a state of hopeless nibility."

I remonstrated: "The devils have made a mistake in setting it up. It read in the manuscript ' a fresh emeute in Hungary,' not hell." "The body of the paragraph proves your falsehood."

I glanced again, and sure enough there was a circumstantial detail of a most awful insurrection in his Satanic Majesty's dominions, with a particular report of the killed and wounded, and a note of addenda news, just received by the infernal telegraph, announcing the deposition of Lucifer, and a transitionary republic, under the presidency de facto of the ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte!

My knees shook, my teeth chattered, and I made a charge on the door; but i was too much blinded by mortification to discern the knob, and vainly essayed to creep out through the key-hole; when, fortunately, as I supposed, the foreman interposed for my relief, opened the door, and kindly kicked me down stairs. I then recollected too late the cause of the fatal accident. By writing of so many "emeutes," I had contracted a habitual love from it in the abstract as well as concrete; and so to amuse my fancy one day, I had fabricated a model for the climate of the sulphur lake country; and by mistake had inserted it among my regular PatentPuffer files! Alas! alas!

Covered with disgrace, and struggling with spectres of despair, I applied once more at the office of the Omni-Versus; but the editor was still absent on his crusade against the enemies of the blacks of Senegambia. The same officious little imp who had directed me before to the Puffer, now advised me to try my luck with "the Virtuous Avenger."

No sooner said than done. In a trice I stood in the presence of the great Avenger.

He was a man of powerful bone and sinew, and so far justified one half of his title-the epithet of Avenger; he looked one! But then his pallid face, huge whiskers, keen-rolling eyes, and air of boundless bravado, seemed to render the other half-the word virtuous a very problematical appellative.

"What do you want?" asked the Avenger, as he caught a glimpse of my incomparable red moustache, projecting timidly through the partially opened door of his office in Broadway.

"I want to become a contributor, if you please," was my hesitating

answer.

"Who are you?"

"Alcibiades Scribo," I pronounced, proudly, bridling up with the bright reminiscences attached to my name.

The enunciation had the effect of magic on the Avenger.

"What!"

he exclaimed, in tones of joyful surprise-" have I the honor to receive a visit from the renowned author of the emeutes in the Patent-Puffer?"

"The same," I pronounced, with a low obeisance. "Come in-be seated; I wish to engage you immediately in the criminal line. Can you steal? rob? murder? and commit adultery ?-eh?" "What do you mean?" I inquired, shuddering with horror and astonishment.

"I mean," replied the Avenger, with a grim smile, "can you create crimes of the catalogue I have indicated? Can you shower them off the point of your pen with the ink thick as hail, and black as hades?"

"O, if that's what you are after," I rejoined, with burning enthusiasm, "I'm your man. With my wizard's wand of a goose quill, I can convert all the maids and matrons of New-York into amorosas in a single week; and if you will give me only a month, I will make of this great city such a second Sodom that it shall take fire and burn up of its own accord by a swift process of spontaneous combustion!"

We then hastily arranged the following graduated scale of prices to be paid for my contributions:

My engagement with the Virtuous Avenger proved to be a matchless mint. My letters had an unprecedented run, and my incredible facility in composition enabled me to keep an ample supply in the market. What effect those ethical effusions produced in the hearts of their host of readers, it is impossible for me to assert with absolute dogmatism. I can only infer the fact, analogically, from their impression and action in the depths of my own bosom. By feasting my imagination daily on scenes of paphian vice, I began to feel an ardent penchant from the reality. I yearned especially to be the hero of a romance in fashionable life; to concoct an elopement with some gay, gorgeous creature of the upper elements, whose form should be a model for French novels-whose thoughts must be as pictures of fairy dreams.

Accordingly, to attain the zenith of my new ambition, I took a fashionable boarding house in one of the most aristocratic places of the city. I changed my name to the sonorous and classical appellative of "Doctor Anastasius Greenmeadow," and passed myself off as a young physician of independent fortune, recently arrived from the south. To aid the illusion, I hired me an African servant of the most unexceptionable sable, and by dealing a handsome douceur, secured his zealous co-operation in the manœuvres of my grand campaign against the universe of soft heads and susceptible hearts! While, to avoid all danger of detection and exposure, I observed the precaution not to drop the faintest hint in the circle of my literary friends as to my domestication in the sphere of blue ether.

The first inventions worked admirably. Fatuma as well as Cupido seemed to smile on my heroic endeavors. There was a certain grayhaired gentleman of some sixty winters, residing at my boarding-house, This sexagenarian, known in the world of Wall-street, as "Broker John Millionado," was excessively ponderous both in purse and person; and what delighted me far more, had a youthful wife without children. Eldelia Fancidia--such was the angelic name-was a light, airy creature, graceful as a sylph, joyous as a child, thoughtless as a butterfly; in short, she was the ideal of beauty, innocence, and bliss embodied. The music, light and loveliness of a dream organized!

For such a god-send I thanked my stars, and set my traps! I found, however, an unconquerable obstacle to a direct assault on this fair citadel, in her infantile simplicity and purity from every thought and taint of passion; she appeared incapable of love as a sunbeam or flower. Hence, as I could not hope to take her by storm, I resorted to stratagem.

Eldelia Fancidia was devoted to novel-reading-not on account of its voluptuous lures, but for the sake of its brilliant dramatic combinations. So I made my approaches on this weaker side. I brought her the newest and most dazzling. I even went so far as to translate tales from the French and German, for her especial amusement; and we soon became the best of friends. In our long conversations, I improvisated brief stories of love, war, and chivalry. The improvisation was not, to me, a process of any labor; since, without vanity, I may felicitate myself on having been born with a natural talent for lying. I never, in the whole course of my life, could copulate two thoughts without perpetrating some monstrous fib!

Having thus, as I conceived, fully prepared my beautiful Fancidia for the first trial, I proposed "that we two, as a mere matter of sportive jest, should go through with the dramatic evolutions of a fashionable novel : we would interchange billets doux, pretending the most ardent attachment in all its different stages of developement, from the first coy notes breathing the chaste perfumes of fancy, on to the last planning epistles of passion, projecting the winged elopement: in the meantime, I would escort her to public places, and act the inamorato to perfection: and then, at the conclusion of the wild play, we would show the correspondence to the husband, Broker Millionado, extinguish him and ourselves with merry laughter, and end by burning the letters!" Such was my insidious proposition; and Eldelia Fancidia accepted it with transports of enthusiasm. We hastened to put it in execution.

Oh! Alcibiades Scribo--Anastasius Greenmeadow, or whatsoever indeed be thy true title for amidst thy multitudinary aliases, I fear me thou hast lost thy nominative identity-say, thou discrowned king, non, were not those delicious hours? days when every flash of sunlight was a fling of gold? and nights, when every gem of dew was a drop of honey from the granary of Paradise? Dost remember, Scribo, those sweetprattling promenades in Broadway with that blue-eyed angel on thine arm, while the wind blew her shining ringlets about thy cheek, like the plumes of some happy bird? Dost remember those waftings on the sunny waters, while the snowy sails of the yacht flew on high, or the steam his sed in its iron tubes, as the thundering paddles boomed on to hear thee away to triumph? Dost remember the soft, silken minutes of tete-a-tete in the private boxes of the Astor, when thou madest love in earnest, and alas! thy Fancidia in jest? Or those evening walks to Hoboken, when every zephyr kissed its own whispering leaf, and every flower seemed sighing its soul out in voluptuous odors? Dost remember, Scribo Anastasius, or as thou now art called-plebeian "John Smith?" Ah! me! I remember nothing else!

It was during the interlude of this dramatic love-play, that the editor of the Omni-Versus, having accomplished the salvation of the blacks of Senegambia, returned to New-York, and hearing of my literary achievments, sought me out. I found him to be a man of universal genius, as, indeed, one who had assumed the emendation of the divine erata in the Book of Nature, should be. According to the Omni-Versus, the Deity had committed five capital mistakes: 1. In endowing man with the appetite for individual property: 2. In giving him the absurd passion for familism: 3. In clothing him with the ridiculous attribute of conscience, that fertile source of fear and superstition : 4. In implanting deep within the soil of his nature the desire for permanent marriage and a fixed aversion to the "free series;" and, 5. In the creating the children of Africa and the sun, with black skins, perfumed to excess!

The remedy proposed to extirpate these radical evils, was to consist in casting all the varieties of the human species, of every color, shade and character-all creeds-all politics-all ideas-all institutions-into one huge crucible of social chemistry, and there melt them down, and intermingle them in a common mass-stir them well with pokers of moonshine; submit them to slow distillation at a pale-red heat; and then rake them out in rich amalgam purer than heaven's ether, and brighter than all earth's gold.

As Omni-Versus propounded these sublime conceptions with astonishing eloquence, I yielded my assent most cordially; and the consequence was a warm invitation to attend a soiree of world-Reformers, the ensuing night.

Accordingly, at the hour designated, I proceeded to Mrs. P.'s, and was introduced by my new friend, Omni-Versus. After a few preparatory flourishes, the conversation began in earnest. The question for discussion was characteristic: "What is the mathematical and social formula for constructing the great Archimedean lever which is to turn the world upside down?"

"The huge crucible," pronounced Omni-Versus, magisterially: "melt the solid globe down: stir the molten mass well with pokers of pale moonshine, and then you will experience little trouble in turning the amalgam bottom upwards! I have said it." As this edict was delivered ex cathedra, the imperial editor did not deem it necessary to amplify by details or to adduce arguments. A murmur of applause followed.

The next oracle was "Phonogra-fatuus," the renowned editor of "The Hieroglyphon," a reform journal, printed in Chinese, Trigrams, and Hexagrams. He was a little red-faced, dumpy Anglo-Saxon, remarkable for the singular curling sneer of his under-lip-a sneer of worldscorn-and for the bold expression of self-conceit on his low brow-that inimitable air, which only can be described by the new compound of " Iknow-it-all.”

"

"To consummate a thorough retroversion," enunciated Phonogra-fatuus;

we must commence with the alphabet. It is idle for you, noble OmniVersus, to talk about amalgamations in social chemistry, while we are all wrong in our A-B-C.'s! Whatever the lever may be, that is destined to turn the world topsy-turvy, rest assured that natural orthography is the only fulcrum on which your lever can work. Our books are all lies: the letters have one sound and the words another. As an example, take the term 'frock-coat; there are nine letters, according to the usual method of printing. Now, suppose we spell it thus: f-r-o-k-u-t,-here we have only siz, and these are all true to nature. I adopt this illustration. I make it my signal and watchword: others may choose any motto they prefer; but I, for one, will manfully charge the host of conservatism, shouting the battle-cry of frokut forever!"

At the conclusion of this logical harangue, there was a fresh murmur of applause, accompanied by the under-song of a suppressed hiss from the partisans of Omni-Versus.

The next speaker was Miss Mary Jane Matilda Indigofera, a maiden lady of the purest tint of azure. She began with tones sweet as the warble of lute-strings, and the music of soft recorders : "Break the chains from the hands of woman! Abolish the distinctions of sex! GeorgeSand-ize the universe, and lo! your labor would already have achieved its legitimate result. You shall need no Archimedean levers then. When woman shall soar to the zenith, and man sink to the nadir, the equator and poles will stand reversed, and the world will be bottom upwards! Is it not so, Omni-Versus?"

Omni-Versus retorted with a shrug of the shoulders: "My wife has long been topmost in the family, and I say it with sorrow, from that isolated specimen of female rule, I should hesitate to trust the ship of human progress to the pilotage of petticoats, though of the most unquestionable sky-blue."

This sally produced a laugh, when Doctor Parado Pantheos-a pale model of Boston manufacture-delivered himself: "Brown bread is the lever of Archimedes. Abolish cannibalism; cease to fatten on the agonies of your brethren of the flood and field, and "

But the orator was already exhausted; the brown bread regimen, in his case, seemed to have been efficacious for one purpose, at least; it had effected a very interesting asthma.

The Rev. Philo-Sable followed with a voice of thunder, and furious gesticulation: "Let the star of empire complete its cardinal circle. Asia had her day of dominion: Europe replaced her throne: America came afterwards: now let Africa culminate. You seek to turn the world topsy-turvy: commit it to the hands of the children of Congo; they will do it in a trice: how can you doubt it, with the case of St Domingo, and the recent experiments in so many of the West Indies, present before your eyes?"

Then came Professor Homo Bumperion, the incomparable handler of empty heads. In a voice piercing as the scream of a steam-whistle, he shrilled: "To construct your lever, you must have the organ of constructiveness yourselves in a state of immense developement, whereas I discover on all the heads here, it is miserably diminutive, as indeed are most of the other organs, excepting only the pole-star of self-esteem: hence, I am compelled to pronounce the whole scheme a failure; for protest and asseverate as vehemently as you please, you will never succeed well in any enterprise without brains!"

That was the most sensible remark made during the session of the soiree; but it threw the entire hive into angry consternation; and they began to vociferate their cherished war-cries, all together in a breath: "Social Crucible! Frokut! Woman and the Breeches! Brown Bread! Congo--Senegambia! Amalgamation! Brains!" Such was the discordant chorus to the grand ballet of Reform. It was a Babel of heterogeneous, shrieking sounds-din wild enough to wake the dead! or deafen the d-1!

I stopped my ears with my fingers; endeavored to implore mercy, but found articulation impossible; my teeth were set on edge, so as to thrill with torture at a touch of air! In a fit of desperation, I clutched my hat, shot the arch of the door-way, and happily gained the stoop. But I was not allowed to repose even there; the clamor of the disputants in the soiree was audible in the public street. I still recognised the separate watch-words: "Crucible! Amalgam! Frokuts! Woman's Breeches! Congo! Brown Bread! Brains!" Then I fled away, as if a hundred devils had been treading on my heels!

In cool reflection, afterwards, as to this strange convention of Reformers, what struck me as the most astonishing thing of all, was the fact that no two of the projectors agreed in a single opinion!

The following day I was doomed to receive a terrible blow. On visiting the office of the Virtuous Avenger, I was astonished to find the editor in a horrible state of physical anguish. The blood was streaming from his head to his feet: his face was cut into gory ribbons. The truth was, he had just endured a dreadful cowhiding for having published an article of mine, in his paper of the previous Saturday! He was foaming, furious, rabid; his eyes were red with rage as a mad dog's with poison: and as he caught a twinkle of my incomparable moustache through the door, he grasped his cane and made at me with a yell of vengeance.

I may as well here inform the reader, that nature had perpetrated an unaccountable blunder in my organization; she had denied my head the smallest modicum of combativeness; but yet for this enormous defect, perhaps I ought not really to complain, for the prudent mother of the world, as if by way of making me ample amends, had endowed my heels with the most marvellous powers of fugacity! Let but a cane hustle, or a cowhide sing one of its spirit-stirring tunes in my rear, and I undertake to distance any locomotive that ever hummed on its iron race-track! This wonderful fugacity has often served me in sudden emergencies, and, Deo volente, it shall continue to serve me till the end of my days. And so for every forward leap of Virtuous Avenger, I submitted a rapid retrograde. He proved, however, to be a perfect blood-hound himself, both in speed and bottom. The chase extended up Broadway, and away we went, to the infinite amusement of the torrent of passing pedestrians. I could hear the Avenger puffing behind me, like a whole host of steamboats; but it soon became evident that he had miscalculated the quantity of lightning in his joints and muscles, when contrasted with mine: he began to drop rods astern, when he bethought of an artifice which well nigh insured my ruin.

He shouted at the top of his lungs, "Head him! catch him! It is the villian Seribo-my criminal correspondent!"

The word Scribo burst like a thunder-clap on the excited crowd. Every fifth man, that day, as indeed any other day, in Broadway, had been slandered by Scribo, while every second woman had been denounced for a courtesan. Hence the tumult may be conceived. Cowhides started out of pockets by the score, as I flew. The unlucky name, "Scribo," rolled on the air, in a long, wild, maddened malediction! My hair stood on end, and I gave up all for lost. But then intervened the recollection of my innumerable miraculous escapes in the teeth of similar perils, to encourage me: 1 put forth my last grain of fugacity, shot like a winged arrow into a cross-street, darted swifter than a dolphin through a narrow alley, and finally achieved my salvation!

Nevertheless, I had suffered irreparable disaster; I had lost the patronage of the Virtuous Avenger. Then I determined to play my last trumps; to test my progress with the dear Eldelia Fancidia Millionado. Accordingly, I hastened home; shaved, washed, perfumed, and donned my rarest suit: then sought the parlor of the beautiful enchantress. Our dramatic correspondence had already terminated in the usual epistolary arrangements for an immediate elopement.

I found my Fancidia alone: she was perusing my recent letter. Never before had I seen her look half so beautiful. The fire in her beaming blue eyes, the tint of rich vermillion on her rosy cheeks, more than justified the poetic epithet, "divine." As I took my seat on the sofa beside her, she remarked, merrily, "Well, Mr. Greenmeadow, we have played out our comedy, and nothing remains but to read my husband the copies, enjoy a hearty laugh, and then let the flames do their part."

"Hem!" I ejaculated timidly; "I am sorry for so fine a beginning to end thus abruptly."

"So am I," she rejoined, naively.

The simple rejoinder raised my drooping resolution. I ventured out: "If you are willing, it shall have a more brilliant denouement."

"What!" she asked with some surprise; "do you wish to go over the drama again?"

"No," I faltered, desperately; "I would make the drama a reality!" She turned pale as a corpse, and was silent. Then it must have been the devil that suggested the old adage to my stupid imagination, as to silence giving consent; and I proceeded in a torrent of enthusiastic eloquence: "O, adorable Fancidia, have you not perceived it?" Hem! Have you not read it in my longing eyes? Have you not heard it in many a burning sigh? Hem! hem! Have you not dreamed it-hem!when my spirit-hem! hem!-hovered around your sleeping-hem!pillow? Hem! hem!"

The interjectional hems, so thickly interpolated in the foreging address, were squeezed out of my soul by the look of unutterable astonishment which I noticed in Fancidia's blue eyes. At the last hem! she interrupted me: "Anastasius. are you crazy?"

"Yes," I answered despairingly, making a final charge, like Ney and the old guard at Waterloo: "Yes, adorable Eldelia Fancidia Millionado, I am crazy with love!"

Once more she grew pale and was silent. Then I plunged into drowning water. "O, ethereal, ineffable Fancidia," I exclaimed, falling on my knees "O! Oh! Alas! How I love you!"

She bounded to ring the bell; but I seized her by the skirt and detained her.

"Wretch! give me up my letters," she commanded, scornfully. "Not unless you pay me two thousand dollars for them!" I stammered. These were my last trumps!

"What are you going to do with my letters?" she asked, in tones of alarm.

"Publish them in the Virtuous Avenger," I retorted with a triumphant smile-I felt, like Rob Roy, that I had my foot on my own hill of heather now: publish them in the Virtuous Avenger; have them placarded on every foul wall; cried by all the ragged news-boys in NewYork; trumpeted abroad to the four quarters of the globe; scattered on the wings of every wind under heaven! I will write a new novel, and make those epistles the basis; I will dramatise them, and have the subject acted in all the theatres: for, hear it and tremble, O scornful Eldelia Fancidia, I am Alcibiades Scribo, the famous forger of foreign emeutes,' and the dire concocter of all domestic mischief!"

She uttered three piercing shrieks, as if every heart-string were breaking in her heaving bosom. "O," I thought, "the two thousand dollars will come now!" And something did come then-sudden as thoughtswift as lightning-stinging as the poisoned needle in the tail of a hornet! It was the thrash-thrash-thrash; ling-ling-cullarup of a cowhide on my doomed shoulders. I turned, and the ponderous person of Broker John Millionado fronted within three inches of my nose. Then I essayed the fugacity of my heels in vain; for a hand of iron grasped my throat and held me as with the jaws of a vice; and still the cow-hide sung its rich song, now over my face and eyes-" thrash!thrash-ling-ling-cullarup!”

Ah! well was the beast named Millionado; for he certainly gave me the largest possible slice of a million cuts. In the end I delivered up the accursed letters, and shot the door, receiving as a parting salute a kick, unmentionable as to locality, that sent me headlong to the bottom of the stairs, where my face struck against a dd flower-pot, which spoiled the bridge of my smelling organ forever!

I learned afterwards that Millionado had been concealed in a closet, within audible distance, during the whole of my interview with Fancidia. Horrible! horrible woman!

That was a farewell-a long farewell to all my greatness. As plebeian John Smith, I now vegetate in the noisome atmosphere of old Orange; and how I continue to vegetate is the business of nobody but the starpolice.