----AS I was saying last month, beloved reader, that 'I am thine in promise,' or to that purport, I have anchored myself in my _fauteuil_, to the end that I may be thine in fulfilment. In our conversation about the Catskills, I omitted sundry pertinent matters, with the which, however, malgré the postponement, I shall not here afflict. Since that period, I have for the most part been pent i' the populous city, amid the wakeful noises by day thereof, and by night the calm security of the streets thereof. I affect the supernatural bawl of the watchman, as it rings up to my pillow; I love the serenade which the neighboring lover sings to his fair, and of which I get the good as well as herself; I like to see the straggling cloud go floating over the slumbering town at midnight, with the moon silvering its edge; or mayhap to note the sheen of a star greeting the vision over a chimney-pot. All these have charms for my eye and ear; I seem to see holy sights and shapes in the firmament; the winds come and go on their circuits, unknowing how many brows they fan; and at times they hush a whole metropolis to silence, insomuch that its wide boundary scarce produces so much noise 'as doth a chestnut in a farmer's fire.' * * * * * BY-THE-BY, when the sun begins to set at right descensions, and make his winter arches, I always think of the roaring fires in the domicil of the rural husbandman, with feelings akin to envy. Ye who toast your heels by anthracite; who survey the meagre 'blue blazes' of Liverpool coal, and whose nostrils take in the dry odor thereof, being reminded thereby of those ever-burning brimstone beds, where Apollyon keeps his court, and Judas has his residence; ye, I say, who have a life-long intimacy with these sorts of fuel, can have but small conception of a winter's fire in the country. Far round doth it illumine the apartment where it rages; intolerable is proximity thereunto; and its 'circle of admirers' is always large, because they cannot come a-nigh. A pleasant disdain is felt for the snow which whirls on whistling winds against the pane; the herds are huddled in their cotes secure; and the storm has permission to mumble its belly full, and spit snow at its pleasure. Hugeous reminiscences of delight come over my spirit, in this connexion; post-school hours; the steaming bowl of flip, or those orthographical convocations, where buxom maidens exulted in their secret heart, as tall words were vociferously mounted, in correct emission, by greenhorn swain. Sleigh-rides likewise; amatory pressures, under skin of buffalo or bison; long processions through wintry villages, whose tall smokes rose from every chimney; pillars of blue, standing upright in the air, like columns of sapphire. Cider, with its acidity of remembrance; apples, that melted on the tongue, as they descended toward the diaphragm; landscapes of snow; and slides down hill!--not