both sides of the Potomac, what can? In this view how delightful are the prospects before us! A strife so friendly, so nearly equal in its results, cannot possibly stop here. Eclipse must run again, or pass for a foundered old coward. Even while I write, rumor says, that he is challenged to try his bottom at the seat of government, upon a purse of from twenty to fifty thousand dollars.

11. But stop this galloping pen of mine, and stick to the turf on Long Island. Another thing which added surprisingly, it seems, to the brilliancy and pleasure of the scene, was the presence of a great number of ladies, the larger part of whom, I dare say, staked something on the occasion,

12. You need not look so sarcastically at me; for, let me ask, why should ladies be excluded from the sports of the race ground? Answer me that, if you can. Why, sir, how must those ladies in the pavilion have been enraptured, how must it have awakened all the finest sensibilities of the female heart, to witness the straining and panting emulation of the race coursers;-to see them coming out at last, all foaming and covered with gore!

13. Verily! we have heard nothing for a long time in this dull corner of the world, which has so forcibly reminded us of old Rome in her power and glory, when her sober matrons and tender-hearted virgins witnessed with a delight bordering upon ecstasy the gladiatorial shows and contests in the amphitheatre. Who can tell how soon the American fair will attain to the same enviable height of refinement and sensibility?

14. It may be true that the blood which trickled down so profusely at the Union races, was not human blood. It was nothing more, probably, than what such a desperate trial must needs draw forth from the lacerated bodies of the brute competitors. But who can tell, should the strife for mastery be kept up between the North and the South, with suitable spirit on both sides,-who, I say, can tell, how long it may be, ere wives, and sisters, and daughters, will hear of other contests? These are only hints, you see; and I freely confess to you, that I have not nerve enough to carry this train of thought any further.

15. But to try another heat-it must be very delightful to spend a few days, and a few hundred dollars too, if one has so much, in going to the races. If he has not hun

dreds, why, let him spend what he has and can borrow. Fifty thousand days is something, to be sure-about one hundred and forty years; it might make a difference in loss of time, upon a moderate calculation, of twenty thousand dollars.

16. But why speal of such a paltry sum? It's enough to provoke one to hear these penny calculations, especially when the object to be gained is so immensely important. But you know, if I don't calculate, somebody else will.

17. Who could stay away from such a race? I challenge the whole corps of your long-winded prosers to answer me that, if they can. Who, that went, could help spending from five to a hundred dollars, besides all the bets? If report be true, some hundreds of the spectators must have travelled from a hundred to a thousand miles, to the race ground. But why speak of distance, when it is agreed, on all hands, that racing shortens it exceedingly?

18. Among the moderate estimates of the knowing ones who were near the scene of action, I will just mention a fraction or two more, which I suppose some close calculators will think ought to be reckoned in the general footing. It is said, that at least twenty thousand strangers were in New York at one time, on their way to the race ground; that they could not spend less, upon an average, than twenty dollars, in and about the city. Twenty thousand by twenty; as you are quick in figures, and I cannot stop to multiply, without losing my distance, I must leave it with you to say how much it comes to.

19. Another thought-for while one is upon the course, he must take thoughts as he can catch them, whether they are in place or not-it may be urged in disparagement of the great match, that no little part of the money which was gambled away, honestly belonged to creditors, who may find it very inconvenient to lose it, and that many a wife, with her little children, will feel the gripings of poverty, thus induced, for a great while to come.

20. Such moralizing may be got up, to discourage the noblest emulation that ever glowed in the American bosom; but who will mind it? What are the claims of old-fashioned justice, or affection either, when contrasted with the pleasures of a horse race? If I choose to stake five hundred, or five thousand dollars, upon the issue, what right, according

to the laws of the turf, have my creditors or my family to interfere?

21. If I am the winner-and they all know I expect to win-why, then I shall be so much the better able to pay the one, and provide for the other. But suppose the worstsuppose that I and a hundred others lose to any amount you please. The money only changes hands. It makes as many rich as poor; and how does it improve the morals of those who win! How sober and industrious will they be all the rest of their lives! Besides, those who lose at one race, will probably gain at the next, and so there will be a brisk and healthful circulation through the great body politic.

22. But I anticipate another objection. Whole sheets of small pica * will be set up, about the dissipation attendant upon such a race, as that now under consideration. And indeed I cannot say, but that there might have been some trifling indiscretions, such as swearing, drinking, and the like; but, then, I hate to see mountains made out of mole-hills. 23. It was all in good nature, I dare say; or, if some sparks were elicited by trifling collisions, it had a tendency, you know, to give life, and warmth, and variety to the scene. On this score, you had better be silent; for you will find every thing you can say about public morals and such antiquated things, treated with merited contempt. You will be spoken of in all decent company, as a century behind the age in which you live, and as a blue skinned, canting hypocrite.

24. But I forbear. Many edifying thoughts will suggest themselves to your readers, which, in the dust and hurry of the scene, have escaped me.

Questions. What is it called, when the speaker or writer expresses by his language a sense contrary to that which he intends to convey? Ans. irony. Is this, or sober argument and grave reproof, sometimes the better course in rebuking certain follies and vices? Does the writer of the foregoing piece intend to express his approval, or disapprobation, of horse racing and betting?

LESSON CXV.

Keeping up Appearances.

1. My father was a man of expedients, and had spent his whole life, and exhausted all his ingenuity, in that adroit pres

* Small Pica is the printer's name for type of a particular size.

entation of pretences, which, in common speech, is called keeping up appearances. In this art he was really skilful; and I often suspected then, and have really concluded since, that if he had turned half the talent to procuring an honest livelihood, which he used to slobber over his ill-dissembled poverty, it would have been better for his soul and body both. He was a man that never told a lie, unless it was to keep up appearances.

2. How often have I seen him put to his trumps, steering between Scylla and Charybdis, adroitly adjusting his language so as to make an impression, without incurring a lie, and reduced to shifts by which none were deceived, because all understood them! Once on a time, after a week's starvation to procure a velvet collar for my father's best coat, we were sitting down to a dinner of hasty-pudding and molasses, when, unluckily, one of our neighbors happened to walk in without knocking,-a very improper act, and we had no time to slip away the plates and table-cloth; we were taken in the very fact.

3. I never saw my poor father more confounded. A hectic flush passed over his long, sallow cheek, like the last, sad bloom on the visage of a consumptive man. He looked, for a moment, almost like a convicted criminal; but, however, he soon recovered himself, and returned to his expedients.

4. "We thought," said he, we would have a plain dinner to-day; always to eat roast turkeys makes one sick." There was no disputing this broad maxim. But happy would it have been for our ill-fated family, if there had been no sickness among its members, either of the head or heart, but such as is produced by eating roasted turkey.

5. Yet my father, with all his expedients, was a very unpopular man. Though he was always angling for public favor, he never had skill enough to put on the bait so as to conceal the hook, even to the gudgeons that floated in our shallow streams. There was a broken bridge near our habitation, and one year he was plotting and expecting to be surveyor of the highways, that he might mend it for the public convenience, at the public expense.

6. He was disappointed; and old Mr. Slider, his rival and enemy, was put in the office, who suffered the bridge to remain unrepaired, with the ungenerous sarcasm, that a man who lived in such a shattered house, might well endure to ride over a rotten bridge.

7. There was a militia company, and my father was expecting to be chosen captain, especially as he had been in the revolutionary army, and had actually spoken to Gen. Washington. But at the age of forty-one, they chose him orderly-sergeant; which office my father refused, declaring, with much spitting and sputtering, that he would never serve his ungrateful country again. Thus closed his military honors; he was reduced to the necessity of finding the post of virtue in a private station.

8. I have heard that the only way to cure ambition is, to starve it to death; and all the world seemed to combine to remove my father's favorite passion by that unwelcome medicine. Once we had determined to have a large party at our house, and we desired to get it up in our very best style. We had invited all the grandees of Bundleborough, esquire Wilson, and his one-eyed daughter; Mrs. Butterfly, a retired milliner; Mrs. Redrose, a jolly widow; Mr. Wallflower, a broken merchant; and captain Casket, supposed to be a pensioner on the king of Great Britain.

9. We had raked and scraped, and twisted and turned, to procure all the money we could; my mother had sold pickled mangoes; I was sent to pick up mushrooms, in the great pasture; my father disposed of about two tons of old salt hay, the remaining wheel of an old ox-cart, all his pumpkins and turnips, and of about half his Indian corn, to make up the sum of fifteen dollars, thirty-seven and a half cents, with which we were to shine out, for one evening at least, in all the peacock-feathers with which ingenious poverty could cover over its hide-bound, frost-bitten, hungerwasted frame.

10. We sent for all the china and glass we could beg or borrow; and Mr. Planewell, the carpenter, was summoned to repair our front gate, set up the fence, and new lay the step before the front door; but as there was very little prospect of his ever being paid, he could not come. Two of the legs of our dining-table were broken, and I was ordered to glue them; but, failing in that, I remember I tied them together with a piece of fish-line, which was to be concealed by the depending table-cloth.

11. The table-cloth itself was of the finest and nicest damask; but unluckily, there was a thin spot in the middle of it, almost verging to a hole; but this we could conceal, by the mat on which we laid the great dish in the centre.