it, and told her to be of good cheer, and rushed from the house, and was on his way to Washington in one hour, and soon returned to New York with a letter from the President of the United States, (who knew her husband in his early years,) affectionately assuring her that her claim was paid to Peter Cooper, as her accredited agent and nephew. Great mental excitement and a protracted and dangerous illness followed these painful disclosures, during which Peter did not visit her. After she partially recovered, she instituted a suit against Peter, which he resisted through all the Courts for sixteen years, when the Court of Appeals directed Peter to pay his aunt four thousand and five hundred dollars. The instant Peter heard of the Court’s fatal decision, he mounted a fleet horse and reached his aunt’s at midnight, and approached her with these sweet words: “O, my dear aunt, how do you do? I am so glad to see you. I declare, how well and young you look for one so old as you. Well, my dear aunt, I have come to pay you the money I owe you, which I have kept all this time, and opposed you for sixteen years in the Courts, simply because I feared if I let you have it, somebody would get it away from you, and you would then be poor and penniless in your declining years.—Now, my dear aunt, I do assure you that I always intended to let you have the money; but your memory was so very bad, and you were always so charitable and easily influenced, that I thought I could take care of your money much better than you, and so I have always kept it against my will, and solely for your good. And now, dear aunt, I have written a receipt for you to sign, and if you will just take this pen, and sign it, you can have all this money in gold that you see in my handkerchief, which will keep you comfortable all your days.” And the poor old infirm creature tottered to the table, and put on her spectacles, and signed a receipt with her skeleton and trembling hand, for two thousand dollars, in full of all demands against Peter Cooper, which the unparalleled villain had thus cunningly written to defraud her of the balance of two thousand and five hundred dollars, which the Court of Appeals had directed him to pay her, after sixteen years of obstinate and wicked litigation on his part. He then gave her two thousand dollars, and left her as a robber darts from a habitation when its tenant is after him with a dagger or revolver. She threatened to prosecute him for obtaining $2,500 through false pretences, and he dared her to do it. But she descended from patriotic blood, and was so excited and exasperated at his wrongs, and disgusted with her species and modern kindred, and being superannuated and broken-hearted, and literally worn out, that, while sitting in her bed dictating a letter to the President of the United States respecting the monstrous robberies of Peter Cooper, she fell back and expired, with her withering execrations of her nephew on her lips. And it was