The note the boy brought me did not seem adapted to furnish much provocation for laughter. It was as follows:-- "_United States Hotel_, Jan. 4th, 1834. "SIR,--I hope you will excuse the liberty of a stranger addressing you on a subject he feels great interest in. It is to require a place of interment for his friend[s] in the church-yard, and also the expense attendant on the purchase of such place of temporary repose. "Your communication on this matter will greatly oblige, "Sir, "Your respectful and "Obedient Servant, "J.B. BOOTH." It will be observed that after the word "friend" an [s] follows in brackets. In the original the word was followed by a small mark which might or might not give it the plural form. It could be read either "friend" or "friends"; but as we do not usually find ourselves called upon to bury more than one friend at a time, the hasty reader would not notice the mark, but would read it "friend." So did I; and only afterward, in consequence of the _dénouement_, did I notice that it might be read in the other way. Taking my hat, I stepped into the street. Gas in those days was not; an occasional lantern, swung on a wire across the intersection of the streets, reminded us that the city was once French, and suggested the French Revolution and the cry, "_À la lanterne!_" First I went to my neighbor, the mayor of the city, in pursuit of the desired information. A jolly mayor was he,--a Yankee melted down into a Western man, thoroughly Westernized by a rough-and-tumble life in Kentucky during many years. Being obliged to hold a mayor's court every day, and knowing very little of law, his chief study was, as he expressed it, "how to choke off the Kentucky lawyers." Mr. Mayor not being at home, I turned next to the office of another naturalized Yankee,--a Yankee naturalized, but never Westernized. He was one of those who do not change their mind with their sky, who, exiled from the dear hills of New England, can never get away from the inborn, inherent Yankee. He was a Plymouth man, and religiously preserved every opinion, habit, and accent which he had brought from Plymouth Rock. When Kentucky was madly Democratic and wept over the dead Jefferson as over her saint, he had expressed the opinion that it would have been well for the country, if he had died long before,--for which expression he came near being lynched. He was the most unpopular and the most indispensable man in the city,--they could live neither with him nor without him. He founded and organized the insurance companies, the public schools, the charitable associations, the great canal, the banking-system,--in short, all Yankee institutions. The city was indebted to him for much of its prosperity, but disliked him while it respected him. For he spared no Western prejudice; he remorselessly criticized everything that was not done as Yankees do it: and the most provoking thing of all was that he never made a mistake; he was always right.