notes in his strong box, and the Frenchman to his store, where, receiving his newly-purchased goods, he immediately commenced marking them one hundred per cent. above cost, thus making before midnight, to use his own boast, a _profit_ of twenty thousand dollars on his purchase! Three days afterward the official news of peace came; English goods instantly fell one half, and our little Frenchman awoke in horror from his dream of cent. per cent. Nine persons out of every ten under such circumstances would have failed at once. But _nil desperandum_ was the motto of our Frenchman. He saw that he had been '_bit_' by his commercial friend, and he immediately set his wits at work to turn the tables upon him. So, late in the evening of the next day he repaired to the dwelling of the importer, and told a long and pitiful story of his embarrassments. He said his conscience already smote him for making so heavy a purchase while in failing circumstances, and that he had come to make the only reparation in his power; namely, to yield up the goods obtained of the importer, on the latter's cancelling the notes given therefor. The Yankee at first demurred; but on the Frenchman insisting that he was a bankrupt, and that he feared the moment he opened in the morning the sheriff would pounce upon him with a writ that would swallow up every thing, he finally agreed to the proposition. 'Half a loaf was better than no bread,' he thought; and so the notes and the bill of sale were accordingly cancelled. By daylight in the morning the Yankee was at the Frenchman's store, with his teams, as had been agreed upon the night before, and every package of his goods was soon removed. The two merchants again parted, the Frenchman with a mind relieved of a heavy load, and the Yankee rather down in the mouth at the result of his trade. Two or three days afterward, as the importer was passing the Frenchman's store, he observed his sign still up, and every thing apparently as flourishing as ever. He stepped in to see what it all meant. 'Hallo! Mr. S----,' said he, 'I thought you had failed!' '_Failed!_' repeated the Frenchman, thrusting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and sliding his legs apart from counter to counter, till he resembled a small Colossus of Rhodes: '_Failed?_ No, be gar! Firmer than ever, Mr. H----, but I _should_ have failed, _almosht_, if I hadn't got rid of dem tamn'd English goods at cost!' Straitway the out-witted Yankee 'departed the presence!'' . . . IT has been generally supposed that the oratorical efforts of 'Major POGRAM,' as described by Mr. DICKENS in a late number of his 'Chuzzlewit,' rather carricatured even the worst specimens of western eloquence; but the subjoined passage from the speech of a Mr. MAUPIN in the Indiana legislature, upon the subject of establishing a tobacco warehouse and inspection at Paducah, seems to militate against the validity of this 'flattering function:'