Whoever first described common fame, or rumor, as belonging to the sager sex, was a very owl for shrewdness. She has in truth certain feminine qualities to an astonishing degree, particularly that benevolent anxiety to take care of the affairs of others, which keeps her continually hunting after secrets, and gadding about proclaiming them. Whatever is done openly and in the face of the world, she takes but transient notice of; but whenever a transaction is done in a corner, and attempted to be shrouded in mystery, then her goddess-ship is at her wit’s end to find it out, and takes a most mischievous and lady-like pleasure in publishing it to the world. It is this truly feminine propensity which induces her continually to be prying into the cabinets of princes, listening at the key-holes of senate-chambers, and peering through chinks and crannies, when our worthy Congress are sitting with closed doors; deliberating between a dozen excellent modes of ruining the nation. It is this which makes her so baneful to all wary statesmen and intriguing commanders,—such a stumbling-block to private negotiations and secret expeditions,—betraying them by means and instruments which never would have been thought of by any but a female head. Thus it was in the case of the affair of Fort Casimir. No doubt the cunning Risingh imagined, that, by securing the garrison, he should for a long time prevent the history of its fate from reaching the ears of the gallant Stuyvesant; but his exploit was blown to the world when he least expected, and by one of the last beings he would ever have suspected of enlisting as trumpeter to the wide-mouthed deity. [Illustration: DIRK SCHUILER. ]