that it was a very serious business, indeed, in which he had just been engaged. Thereupon, the judge addressed him in language of congratulation and counsel, and our newly-made fellow-countryman respectfully departed from the tribunal, conscious that he had attained no mean privilege and had secured a safeguard, like that, by the declaration of which the Apostle of the Gentiles stayed the uplifted hands of his persecutors, and caused them to tremble at the thought of misuse or degradation inflicted upon a Roman citizen. Now, I believe, whatever is left of the ceremony upon such occasions is slurred over in a clerk's office, or the part performed in court scarcely attracts the attention of the magistrate upon the bench. The moral of this change of practice may be left to the reflection of the judicious reader. But it was something then to be, or to be made an American citizen. Not long before this, there had been an earthquake, which, though of brief duration, had caused no little alarm,--a terrific sound always, however slight the shock,--and in this instance making houses tremble and shaking down various articles from their places of deposit. In the early days of the colony, these phenomena were not uncommon, and are said to have been of no little power in this part of New England. Uncle Richard described the recent one as rumbling under the frozen ground leading to his barns, as if a line of heavily-loaded wagons had rolled over it. Being something of a philosopher, and better educated than usual at the time, he explained the cause of such physical occurrences to us young ones. "The fact is," he said, "the water in certain parts of the earth becomes intensely heated and lets off a quantity of steam of amazing expansive power. It is like a tea-kettle, which if you shut the nozzle tight, may either throw off the lid with great force, or the kettle itself bursts with the strain upon it. So the steam, under the earth, heated by central fires, and gaining immense volume and power, seeks the hollows in its neighborhood, and rushes into them with a force which produces the concussion and the rumbling sound; and the shaking of the surface which we perceive is really like the commotion in the tea-kettle and the trembling of the vessel when the steam has no vent. It is an awful thought that we thus live over the action of these subterranean fires; but they are in the control of the Almighty, and all we have to do is to submit to God's will and merciful providence."