development of his character." "And pray," said my uncle, "did he ever disclose the reason of his strange appearance in your neighbourhood ?" "He told my father," said the backwoodsman, "scraps of his history a thousand times, but never unless he was half sea's over with corn whiskey." "Come then," said my uncle, "take another glass of wine Mr. Coon, and let us have the history."

THE STORY OF THE LAST OF THE COCK'D HATS.

"I was born," the old fellow used to say, "on York River near the Old Brick House, and passed my younger days in a constant succession of disasters, all of which I shall one day bring before the public, and hope that the effect thereof will be the means of saving many a day-dreamer from destruction." He would resist every entreaty of my father to let him more fully into the history of his younger days, but seemed resolutely determined to preserve that portion of his life for the public, and leave his neighbours to content themselves with the after events of his no doubt interesting biography. He spoke of his having been taken by the Indians, on a trip to the Western wilds; of his escaping by swimming the river Kanawha at its mouth, and taking a part, sorely against his will, in the great battle fought against the Indians at Point Pleasant in "74. But, these were tedious narratives to backwoodsmen, who never heard any thing else from their infancy; therefore, I shall pass them over and relate the

causes which made him a wanderer a second time, to the wild and uncivilized country west of the Alleghanies.

"I had not remained many weeks at the Point," said he, "before the spirit of discontent seized upon me as usual, and I resolved to desert. Accordingly,

I started one night, crossed the Kanawha on a log, and retraced my steps back to the Old Dominion. Oh! how my heart danced with joy when I ascended the highest pinnacles of the Alleghany, and beheld my beloved low-lands, the soil of my nativity, lying in an endless perspective before me. I felt neither hunger nor cold, although I had not broken fast during the day, (my stock of jerk being out,) and the bleak winds of November, had found a thousand apertures to my skin, through the tattered garments. The savages were left behind, and my beloved country was in sight before me. 1 struck fire, and piling up a quantity of dry wood around me, stretched myself upon the hard stones and made but one nap the whole night, dreaming of oyster banks, mint-sling and bear-skin great coats.

In the low lands I passed along easy enough, for every house was mine so long as I chose to remain ; a few weeks brought me to the banks of the delightful York, just in time to be enrolled in the Militia, drafted as a soldier, and sent marching out of the country again to Guilford Court-house. I cursed my evil destiny which still pursued me wherever I went. Oh! how I wept, and turned my streaming eyes back upon the hamlet where I was born, the little mill with its busy wheel glittering in the sun, and that sweet

valley where I had spent so many delicious moments of my youth in chewing the cud of future greatness, and as an old master of mine used to observe, "building vast and magnificent castles in the air.” "I will pass," said he "the tedious marches and counter-marches, the hungering days and sleepless nights, which are the never-failing companions of the soldier, and come at once to the battle, or at least the part I took in it, for I was so completely terrified and astonished at the martial array and splendid uniform of the British troops, that I knew nothing which passed around me. Terror and phrenzy laid hold of me at once; I knocked down several of our own men with the breech of my musket, now dodging to the right and now to the left as a bullet would whistle on either side, until the agony became too great to bear, when I fled from the field as fast as my body would carry me.

In my flight, I was met by an officer from my own neighbourhood, who ordered me to stop and mount a led horse which his servant was holding, and retire with him into a deep bottom at some little distance from the battle ground. I mounted at a leap, and pushed off to the place appointed. Mingoe had some valuable papers belonging to his master, also two case bottles full of liquor, with a bundle of mint tied behind his portmanteau; these last mentioned articles he had strict injunctions to defend to the extremity of his life. "I became very restless," said the old cock'd hat, "in my new situation. Balls, both from musketry and cannon, whistled over my head, and cut off the branches of the

trees around me. 1 begged of Mingoe to change his position, and used every means to convince him of our personal danger, but in vain. A dense volume of sulphureous smoke was driving up towards us, and I became desperate and cried out to the negro, that if a ball should break one of his master's case bottles or tear away one sprig of mint, that he and myself had better be in the hands of the Devil than where we were. The last argument had the desired effect; we put lash to our horses, and I was soon carried out of the environs of Guilford forever. Mingoe stopt and bawled out to me to halt and give up the horse, but I could not rein in the accursed brute; he ran off with me, and never stopt until I arrived at Prince Edward Court-house. There I left him, and pressing another horse in the name of the Commonwealth, left the disastrous news of the defeat far behind me, and spread it as I went through the upper countries, still pressing horses as I advanced, until I came to the frontier settlements.

Here, I sat me down upon a rock at the top of the Alleghany mountain, and resolved to find out some place in the western wilds, where I might live the balance of my life, entirely remote from the intrusion of my fellow man, in peace and quietness."

My father once asked him if he could assign any cause for his cowardice, and whether it was natural or the effect of education. With the greatest gravity in the world, he would answer that he never had any talent for fighting, and always despised the smell of gun-powder since his mother anointed him for the itch.

"And what became of the old fellow," asked my brother Carmine, who, with myself till this period, had listened with the most intense interest to the backwoodsman's narration; "1 know not," said he ; "he left our neighbourhood one day on a stroll up the Kanawha, and was seen by some one fishing for trout in the neighbourhood of the Peaks of Otter, and that is the last we have ever heard of the old Cock'd Hat."

"Timothy Tilthammer, by Heaven," said Car

The young Minister, on thus being requested by my uncle and the company, hesitated for a few moments, during which his face was lighted with an uneasy flush. He however immediately recovered, and with a deep, musical voice, thus commenced the relation of

A TRAIT OF SLAVERY.

"He buys, he sells, he steals, he kills for gold." Montgomery.

"I had long been absent from the place of my nativity, among the western wilds, as some years since I was returning home, with every feeling buoyed upon the tide of pleasure, and my heart bounding with the anticipation of parental and kindred endearment. It was upon one delightful morning in August that I ascended one of the immense ranges of mountains which obstruct the road between the Falls of Kanawha river and Greenbrier court-house. For some time my ride was remarkably pleasant;