You will pardon the interruption, said the stranger, but my attention has been arrested by the counterfeit manikin suspended by the neck to the branch of yonder tree, and my curiosity excited to know what fickle whim or fancy placed it there. Its import, replied the other, not endeavoring to restrain his merriment, is very significant. The female occupants of the adjoining houses have for some time been engaged in a bitter quarrel. The intolerable scolding propensities of one of them, common report avers, caused her husband to resort to that effective mode of obtaining relief. The cunning of the other, in the progress of the quarrel, has devised that silent but expressive expedient as an annoyance and remembrancer to her enemy, and by replacing it as often as it is destroyed, promises fair to be the conqueror in the end. Here you may recognise one of those silly or knavish creatures, in whom it is difficult to tell whether the mule or the monkey predominates. He knows but of one vice in the world, and it is the subject of his constant denunciations. He is ceaseless in his praises of honesty, and as “opportunity makes the thief,” according to the proverb, he will probably preserve his reputation as long as he remains amongst those who know him. It is given as a rule, and in case you encounter him it may prove of service, always to mistrust the man who too much prides himself upon possessing a certain quality, and to be suspicious of him who constantly deals in vehement complaints against a particular vice. Such are generally weak in what they boast themselves strong, and their darts are frequently directed against the very fault peculiar to themselves. It is so, thought Peter, even with the great world, which ever descries its own practices, and yet tenaciously continues in them, as if loathe to part with such excellent causes to elicit its censure, and such admirable escape-valves through which its wrath may freely ooze itself away. There is an amusing and withal pitiable victim of a mistake. He was a lodger at a public inn, and rising early one morning, he was mistaken for a burglar, and received a terrible beating from his hasty and suspicious host. To redress this injury, he flew to the law--a very singular power to decide upon a mistake. The landlord, not thus to be outdone, brought a more serious charge against him in retaliation. The blind Goddess, whose determinations were ascertained by two intelligent juries, very magnanimously gave each the benefit of the mistake, and both found comfortable lodgings in the county prison. There, thought Peter, they had leisure at least to cool their sanguine tempers, and reflect upon the frequent tendency of the merest trifles to grow into importance.