It was evident that Boyo meant to entertain us, notwithstanding his threatening and sullen aspect; and although he fulfilled his word by making no preparations for supper, yet a chamber was getting ready for our repose in the cockloft of the Devil-Tavern. This, in the inclemency of the season, and the want of another house or place of shelter on the island, we considered a piece of princely hospitality, worthy to be paid with gold. Ensconced within the jambs of the fire-place (how different from the blazing, hospitable hearth of the farm-house!) we read the horrid physiognomies around us, and did not derive much comfort from the perusal. Silence reigned in the company. The men had arrived at that brutal stage of the process of intoxication, when the excitement of the brain having passed away, there comes a sullen mood. A host of worse spirits take possession of the man, which, if they are not so turbulent, are of a more fiendish nature. The dull eye, the downcast look, the moping silence, show forth the vile temper which lays its vindictive hands on a woman, and speaks harsh words to the wife of one's bosom. Then come lust, murder, revenge--the passions which vaunt themselves less furiously at other times, and the slow working resolve of the mutinous. The night became colder, and the fire more dim. Floys Boyo ordered Bullion peremptorily to fetch some 'kindlings.' The latter did not disobey the command, but went out grumbling, and returned with some sticks, and wreck-wood, and by the aid of the paint which adhered to them, a more cheerful flame was produced. But it only served to make the darkness more visible; to bring into stronger relief the bar, the cobwebbed ceiling, the filth and squalid wretchedness of the apartment. An uncomfortable feeling of insecurity increased upon me, notwithstanding Tertullian's perpetual '_Courage!_' and'_Cras magnum iterabimus aquor_.' Extremes are always suggestive of their opposites. I thought of the cheerful study at home; the fire blazing; the faces of friends; the hot-pressed volume, the Magazines for the month. There, by the side of Blackwood, brought in violent haste by the last steam-packet, lay the OLD KNICK., first in our affections, whose plain exterior of blue but ill bespeaks the luxury within; whose pages, co-rivals of the Alpine flakes, are never stained by impurity; but there the old man chirrups with the vivacity of youth, and the young has managed to assume the wisdom of the sage. Both meet together in loving cheerfulness, and the ancient sits in his gubernatorial chair, and puffs the long pipe in that dreamy atmosphere. Let the old Dutch spirit reign for ever in 'our beloved regions of Manahatta.'