AL 385.12.40 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY WINWARD PRESCOTT Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, m the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. T is not often that I trouble you, my readers. I should not trouble you now, but for the importu nities of my wife, who "feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is sure, she says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that pressure upon public servants which alone drives any man into the employment of a double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of her heart, that my fortunes will never be remade, she has a faint hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the behavior of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write this communication. I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content. Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, A |