might perhaps prove as fatal to me as the one before alluded to did to my worthy friend. Whatever may have been the cause of my friend’s death, we must feel sorry that, if he was engaged upon so serviceable a work, he was not permitted to complete it and present the result of his labors to the world. The information might have proved of considerable benefit to the philosophically inclined. Indeed, if he had removed all possible doubt of the usefulness of such individuals, and shown the real necessity of their existence in our society, a very difficult problem, I must own, would have been solved. Such a favorable solution, too, would have afforded much consolation to all of that class, and might even have caused a great increase of their number. Of one thing, at least, I am certain: it would have confirmed still more, if such a thing be possible, the habits of an acquaintance of mine, who resides in the same village with me. He is known to the villagers by the designation of Easy Peter, but always writes his name, whenever you can induce him to perform so much manual labor, PETER EASY. He is descended from a family whose lineage has been traced to the Welsh and Germans, of which stocks he is extremely fond of boasting. This, to me, seems simply to illustrate an excellent trait in his character, for it exhibits the respect he entertains for his forefathers. Some of the villagers, however, ascribe his boasts to vanity; declaring that he is as vain as a woman, and that if mythology had no Narcissus, he would furnish it with an excellent one. That these are much out in their reckoning, I am well persuaded; for should he become so enchanted with the loveliness of his figure as to languish to death at the fountain in which it might be reflected, they would be the first to attribute his demise to sheer laziness,--a disease, which, fortunately, is not very fatal, otherwise epidemics would never cease in the world.