Quaker, of Philadelphia, who would not pay me for the fat matter, and when he became so bold as to plunder the title and two blank pages, I pulled off his wig, and run for my life, with Tommy after me, but my fleetness vanquished, and I kept his wig,—with Francis Preston Blair, of the _Washington Globe_, whose publisher was Wm. Greer. I now learned of the sudden death of Charles Manton, of Providence, whom I had most fondly loved since rosy childhood, whose demise cast a gloom over my heart which has never been effaced. I left Washington for Philadelphia in 1830, and took a room with Edward Dodge, with whom I had been a schoolmate in Providence, and who is now a distinguished banker of Wall street, with whose recent misfortunes I strongly sympathize. I now receive a letter from father, requesting my immediate return to Providence, and on my arrival, he introduced me to James Fenner, the Governor of Rhode Island, and to Gen. Edward J. Mallett, the Postmaster of Providence, who married Gov. Fenner’s daughter. I became a clerk in the Post-office, at $400 per annum. [Gen. Mallett’s second wife was a widow of the affluent Haight family, of this city, and he was the President of the St. Nicholas Bank.—He has just been appointed by President Buchanan, Commercial Agent to Florence, where he will probably die, as he is tottering in the bleak evening of life.] I had borrowed money from Israel Post, of New York, before I went to Washington, and when he learned that I was a clerk in the Post-office, he demanded payment, and threatened to write to Gen. Mallett, if I did not immediately cancel his claim. I wrote him that I would pay him from my salary. He replied, that he would not wait. His letters were exciting, and fearing he would write an extravagant letter to Gen. Mallett, and perhaps effect my dismissal, I took the money from the till, and inclosed it in a letter, and as I was about to seal and mail it, Captain Bunker’s admonitions, and my father’s kindness in procuring my clerkship, and my horror of a thief, caused me to forbear, amid tears of joy at my victory over the demon of dishonor. Although this transpired in the Post-office at midnight, and although I boarded near the Post-office, which was a mile from father’s, yet I went home, against a winter’s tempest, and aroused him from his slumber, and told him of the horrors of my position. He stood before me in robes of whiteness, like a Roman statue, and when I told him that I had taken and instantly restored the money to the till, big drops rolled from his cavern eyes in exhaustless profusion, and after pacing the room in utter silence, he halted and said:—“Stephen, my dear son, in early years, you were dishonest, and I feared you were so now. But your firmness and integrity on this occasion, gladden my heart more than I can evince in language. It is midnight, and a storm rages with terrific fury, and I hope you will remain at home to-night, and in the morning