By the time the outside of this mighty air-castle is completed, either the funds or the zeal of our adventurer is exhausted, so that he barely manages to furnish one room within, where the whole family burrow together,—while the rest of the house is devoted to the curing of pumpkins, or storing of carrots and potatoes, and is decorated with fanciful festoons of dried apples and peaches. The outside, remaining unpainted, grows venerably black with time; the family wardrobe is laid under contribution for old hats, petticoats, and breeches, to stuff into the broken windows, while the four winds of heaven keep up a whistling and howling about this aërial palace, and play as many unruly gambols as they did of yore in the cave of old Æolus. The humble log hut, which whilom nestled this _improving_ family snugly within its narrow but comfortable walls, stands hard by, in ignominious contrast, degraded into a cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been recorded, of an aspiring snail, who abandoned his humble habitation, which he had long filled with great respectability, to crawl into the empty shell of a lobster,—where he would no doubt have resided with great style and splendor, the envy and the hate of all the painstaking snails in the neighborhood, had he not perished with cold in one corner of his stupendous mansion. Being thus completely settled, and, to use his own words, “to rights,” one would imagine that he would begin to enjoy the comforts of his situation,—to read newspapers, talk politics, neglect his own business, and attend to the affairs of the nation, like a useful and patriotic citizen: but now it is that his wayward disposition begins again to operate. He soon grows tired of a spot where there is no longer any room for improvement,—sells his farm, air-castle, petticoat windows and all, reloads his cart, shoulders his axe, puts himself at the head of his family, and wanders away in search of new lands,—again to fell trees,—again to clear corn-fields,—again to build a shingle palace, and again to sell off and wander. Such were the people of Connecticut, who bordered upon the eastern frontier of New Netherlands; and my readers may easily imagine what uncomfortable neighbors this lighthearted but restless tribe must have been to our tranquil progenitors. If they cannot, I would ask them if they have ever known one of our regular, well-organized Dutch families, whom it hath pleased heaven to afflict with the neighborhood of a French boarding-house? The honest old burgher cannot take his afternoon’s pipe on the bench before his door, but he is persecuted with the scraping of fiddles, the chattering of women, and the squalling of children; he cannot sleep at night for the horrible melodies of some amateur, who chooses to serenade the moon, and display his terrible proficiency in _execution_, on the clarionet, hautboy, or