"I have nothing of consequence to say, neighbor. I would like to know, however, what all this means!" "Where's your crew, you villain?" said the _judge_. "Crew? I have never found it necessary to have any, neighbor; navigation never engrossed a great deal of my attention, but I get along down here very well--without a crew!" "You do?" responded the _judge_; "well, we're going to hang you up." "You are, eh?" was the cool reply; "well, I have always been opposed to capital punishment, neighbor, and I know it would be unpleasant to me now!" The quiet manner of his reply rather won upon the _Court_, and says the _judge_-- "Who are you, and where are you from?" "My name is Banvard--John Banvard, from Boston!" "It is, eh? What are you doing along here, alone in a canoe?" "_Taking a panorama of the Mississippi, neighbor, that's all._" The _Court_ adjourned _sine die_; the clever artist was untied, treated to the best the market afforded, that night; his canoe, rifle, &c., restored next day, and John went on his way rejoicing in his narrow escape--finished his sketches, and the first great panorama "got up" in our country, and which he took to Europe, after making a fortune by it in America. Genius for Business. It's a highly prized faculty in shop-keeping to sell something when a customer comes in, if you can. A female relative of ours went into a Hanover street fancy store 'tother day, to "look over" some ivory card and needle cases; the slightly agricultural-looking clerk "flew around," and when the question "Have you any ivory card cases?" was propounded, he responded-- "Not any, mum;" glancing into the show-case, his visual orbs _lit_ upon a profusion of well-known matters in domestic economy, for the abrogation of certain parasitic insects. "Haven't any card cases, mum,--_got some elegant ivory small-tooth combs!_" Have You Got Any Old Boots? No slight portion of the ills that flesh is heir to, in a city life, is the culinary item of rent day. Washing day has had its day--machines and _fluid_ have made washing a matter of science and ease, and we are no longer bearded by fuming and uncouth women in the sulks and suds, as of yore, on the day set apart for renovating soiled dimities and dickeys. Another and more important matter, from the extent of its obnoxiousness to our nerves and temper, has come home to our very threshold and hearths, to disturb the even tenor of our domestic quietude and peace. "_Have you got any ole boots?_" Boston lost a good citizen by those bell-pulling, gate-whacking, back-door-pounding infernal collectors of time and care-worn _boots_. The old boot gatherers were almost as diverting as novel to me, when I first located in Boston; but I have long since learned to hate and abhor them, and their co-laborers in the tin-pan, tape, tea-pot, willow work, and white pine ware trade, with a most religious enthusiasm. "_Have you got any ole boots?_"