In time the he-patriarch died, and his fame died with him; but not till he had so indoctrinated his hopeful family, that they have ever since followed his praiseworthy example. A short time since we paid these Children of the Mist a visit at their residence, profiting by one of a thousand changes of abode which brought them within an easy walk of the Quarantine-Ground. Others may seek objects of interest abroad; we are content with what may be found near home; and in this singular family we found a happy practical illustration of the Golden Age, which poets so much regret, and agrarian politicians so devoutly hope and expect to restore. By the margin of a stagnant swamp, rife with malaria and intermittent fever, embosomed in thick woods, stood a pen of rough boards, obtained heaven knows how, about ten feet square, into which about fifty specimens of animal life, human and canine, were crowded. The den was roofed over, and refused entrance to the sun, but was by no means so inhospitable to the rain. The four winds of heaven sought and found free ingress and egress through the chinks; the floor was not; and altogether we have seen much better appointed pig-styes. We first discovered our proximity to this Temple of the Winds by the greeting of a herd of sorry curs, who made a great noise, but retreated snarling, and with averted tails, at the first exhibition of a stone or a stick, as the dogs of the aborigines are wont to do. A shrill, cracked, but clear voice from within, uplifted in energetic objurgation, stilled the clamour, and we entered upon a scene that beggars and defies description. We had seen poverty before, but had never an adequate conception of its extreme until now. A bundle of rags, endowed with suspicious and alarming powers of locomotion, advanced to do the honours of the mansion. An unearthly squeak, that would have driven a parrot of any ear distracted, proclaimed that the thing was human; and after close inspection we made out a set of features which we could only have supposed to belong to Calvin Edson or the Witch of Endor. The head surmounted a withered atomy, from which every muscular fibre seemed to have dried away. There was nothing left for Decay to prey upon: a particle more of waste, and the fabric must have evaporated, or been scattered with the first puff, like a pinch of snuff. This was the worthy mother of the brood. Age could not make her head whiter. She must have been more than a century old, and yet hearing, vision, speech, every faculty, was unimpaired, and she was as brisk as any of the horde. According to all appearances, Time had lost all power over her, and she may yet live longer than the everlasting pyramids. Fancy a mummy stalking from its case, and you have some idea of this spectral apparition.