It must be fifty-two years ago fully when I first remember the house now occupied by Mr. O’Hare as a first-class private boarding house. Its rear faces the Citadel, its front looks into the barrack yard of the former barracks on St. Louis street, now occupied by Major Forrest, Well, this house was then occupied, and I think owned, by a very dear uncle, the late Charles Adolphus H. I say, I think owned, because I perfectly remember the rocks in rear being blasted to make a stable and the building of an extension with vaulting apparatus and so forth for the young people’s recreation, and this extension adjoined the nursery where presided a female nurse of wonderful imaginative powers, who, when the twilight gathered, and we begged for stories, detailed for our benefit horror after horror—her only idea of entertainment for young children. Well, in the garret of this old house my dear grand-uncle found a large ledger, very strongly bound. On the outer pages were these words: "I implore whoever finds this volume to keep it until the year ——, when, if not reclaimed, then burn it unless he would incur the curse of a dead man, for by that time all interested and for whom this book is kept must be dead." The leaves were crossed with red tape, and every here and there sealed with red sealing wax, but by breaking off a bit of wax we could read a few words, and though I do not remember why, we seemed to associate their meaning with some record of the North-West. Devoured by curiosity, we young people, too afraid of the curse to openly destroy the seals, devised every plan to ascertain the contents, and one of them was to give the book to the younger children of the family as a play-thing, hoping they would break them open and the contents be exposed; but alas! one day my dear grand-uncle came upon the scene, fathomed our project, and put a stop for all time to our endeavors by putting said ledger in the stove, and watched it while it burnt. Was this absolutely necessary? Did the most rigid scrupulousness demand this? I don’t know how others will answer. For myself, if I had the book before me now I would read its contents, and then judge whether I should divulge its secrets or not in the interest of the public. What a field of conjecture is open here! This book contained records of the North-West. Of what? Do you remember, my friends, an article that appeared in the papers very many years ago, saying that a voyageur had discovered somewhere in the far north an old white-haired gentleman, the Rev. Ebenezer Williams, who claimed to be the son of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of the decapitated Louis XVI., and whose devoted followers had rescued from prison and substituted a pauper, and at great personal risk brought the unfortunate boy to America and placed him for safe keeping with an Indian tribe, and leaving documents to prove his identity should there ever appear a chance of his claiming the throne.