recounted to him my adventures; but he was impatient of my recital, and eagerly changed the subject to Homer, whose Iliad he made his manual. Nor did he forget to inquire if I had multiplied my wealth by school-keeping at Occoquan; rightly reflecting, that et genus et virtus nisi cum Re vilior alga est; or in plain English, the man who wants money wants every thing. I expostulated with my friend. I represented to him that a base metal dug out of the earth was unworthy the care of a philosopher, who ought to contemn every pursuit that was not intellectual; and that the accumulation of riches tended neither to enlarge the comprehension, nor elevate the fancy. No, Sir, said I, let not an avarice of money make inroads on your heart; the wants of a philosopher are few, for there is more tranquillity in ́an unenvied condition, than the opulence of large possessions. My friend did not hear a word that I uttered. He sat studious and abstracted. You have approved, said he, my Elegy over the grave of a stranger in the woods of Owendaw. I have made an Epitaph on a similar subject. Like a tree in a valley unknown, Come! the weather invites us abroad. Let us walk into the church-yard; I will put Hamlet in my pocket; a single reflection of Hamlet is of more value than all the meditations of Hervey. Death, said George, has mowed down many a lusty fellow in your absence. In that grave reposes a countryman of mine, who died of the yellow fever; an Hibernian, who unfortunately brought with him to this climate his habit of hard-drinking. Often has the ale-house here rung with plaudits at his wit; and often has the landlord's daughter sighed on contemplating the vigour of his herculean form. A brave fellow ! he would have taken the Grand Turk by the beard; at the broad-sword and cudgels he was the first in the village annals; but Death— Cudgelled, said I, his brains out at last! A New-York merchant: only last week he was sitting in his counting-house, feasting his imagination with visions of bags of dollars. His clerks bowed to him with submission, and his servants watched every motion of his hand. But Death is not practised in the arts of ceremony, and he refused his mournful supplications of-A little longer! Oh let me live a little longer!--The writings of the eloquent Burke will supply his grave with an epitaph. What is that? -Why,-His God was his gold; his country his invoice; his desk his altar; his ledger his bible; his church his exchange; and he had no faith but in his banker! Who lies in that grave? No flower grows near it. A New-York Reviewer. He spared writers of no sex or condition; nor has Death spared him. He is gone himself to be reviewed by the Great Reviewer of Reviewers. From whose awful tribunal, said I, there is no appeal. Who reposes there? A poor negro! He was slave to Parson Vandyke, and now sleeps in as good a bed as his master one day will. Fate had imposed hard burdens on him; but Death has taken them from his shoulders. Who lies prostrate there? Drinkwater the The head-board tells you. Newtown school-master, of unclassical memory. Where be his frowns now? Obliterated! Where be the terror his looks inspired? Alas! remembered only to be mocked at. The very schoolboy that once trembled at his nod, spurns him with his foot as he gambols round his grave. Who reclines there? The toast of the village, the fairest of the maidens. She never left the village but the enamoured swains watched her footsteps till she had gone down the hill, passed through the valley, and could be seen no more. Oh! she was beautiful to look upon! And has now worms for her chamber-maids! Alas! nothing now of her remains but what the tomb has concealed. She was cropped like a flower in its bloom by the scythe of the mower. Her lover wastes the day in tears, frantic in grief: but alas! what part of his happiness will grief restore? To whom does this grave belong? grave A soldier in that has taken up his quarters, whose ears will never be disturbed by the sound of another trumpet, but the trumpet at the day of resurrection. This man, Sir, guarded the baggage-waggons, in the rear of the American army, at the battle of Brandywine, and from the big looks he assumed, and the egregious lies he told, in reciting the story, you would be disposed to imagine he had, at least, been the second in command. I knew him at Albany, where he kept a boarding-house. He could tell you who stood their ground, who ran away, and relate how seven stout soldiers were blown up by the bursting of a cohorn. Were these all his battles? He was modest compared to other men of war. No, Sir. He thrice very narrowly escaped being scalped; for in his youth he had fought against the Ohios, the Shawanoes, the Hurons, the Utewas, the Nadouessians, and the Messegagues. O! brave! And he lies here at last? Yes, not redoubtable even to a worm: which, I presume, will be the case of Suwarrow, and Arch-Duke Charles, who now spread terror through the world. Who lies silent, there? A man who, when living, delighted to be heard. He belonged to a club of Jolly Dogs, where it was his constant practice to sit from seven till eleven every night, with a pipe in his left hand, and the handle of a porter-tankard in the other. Thus would he sit smoking and drinking, and bawling out, To order! with the lungs of a jack-ass. But his smoking and drinking incur no reprehension, for it benefited rather than injured society, by hastening his death. The calamity was that he threw that money to a bloated landlady which should have purchased food and raiment for an amiable wife, and four small children. His end His end may be conjectured. His very coffin was seized by his creditors, and his family went on the parish. A jolly dog! truly! And here at last he lies? Yes! never more to fill the tap-room with smoke and noise. Never more to knock his tankard on the table, and cry landlady! Replenish! Never more to fill a chair with his corpulence, and be dubbed President by the porter-washed wits of the club. Never more to carol a bawdy song, and be joined in chorus of the whole room. Where be your songs now, my jolly dog? Your long-winded tales, which you dealt out over your cups? Your egregious lics, which by so of |