'Had her husband been long settled in New-York?' 'No--he had lived there some time,' etc., etc., etc. With this highly unsatisfactory result, the fair inquisitors were compelled to return from their mission. Something, however, in the placid manner of Mrs. Tompkins, had produced an influence upon them which counteracted the natural effects of the irritability arising from ungratified curiosity. Their hypotheses in relation to her were by no means so uncharitable as might have been expected. Mrs. Steele actually maintained that she believed her to be Mrs. Fry, travelling incog. through the United States. Mrs. Hawkins had no doubt it was Dorothy Ripley, a woman who had a call to straggle through the country, vending her religious experience; and that her escort was no less a personage than Johnny Edwards, a lay enthusiast of great notoriety. Miss Cross, the least complimentary in her conjectures, supposed it was Mrs. Royal, a travelling authoress, and bugbear to book-sellers and editors. After a walk of two hours or more, Mr. Tompkins returned from his perambulations, and stopped in at the tavern or stage-house, where he seated himself in an unobtrusive place, and began to read the newspapers. He perused these budgets of literature systematically and thoroughly; and the anxious expectant of the reversion of any particular journal he had in hand, waited in vain for him to lay it down. When he had finished one broad-side, and the fidgetty seeker after the latest news had half thrust forth his hand to grasp the prize, Mr. Tompkins, gently heaving a complacent sigh, turned over the folio, and began to read the next page with the same quiet fixedness of attention, and unequivocally expressed purpose of suffering nothing it contained to escape his attention. It thus took him about two hours to finish his prelection of one of the issues of that great moral engine, as it is called, by whose emanations the people of this country are made so wise and happy. Advertisements and all he read, except poetry, which he seemed to skip conscientiously, generally uttering an interjection, not of admiration. Notwithstanding he thus tried the patience of those who wanted a share of periodical light, he was so quiet and respectable a looking man, that not even a highwayman, or a highwayman's horse (supposing that respectable beast to be entitled to its proverbial character for assurance,) would have attempted to take the paper away from him by violence. His person was in nobody's way. His elbows and knees were kept in; and there was no quarrelling with his shoe or his shoe-tie. There was a _simplex munditiis_--a neat-but-not-gaudiness about him, which every body understood without understanding Latin.