The adventures in the person of Abram Skinner are full of interest. We have many racy details of stock-jobbing and usury. Some passages, of a different nature are well written. The miser has two sons, and his parsimony reduces them to fearful extremity. The one involves him deeply by forgery; and the other first robs his strong box, and afterwards endeavors to murder him. It may be supposed that the misery now weighing me to the earth was as much as could be imposed upon me; but I was destined to find before the night was over that misery is only comparative, and that there is no affliction so positively great, that greater may not be experienced. In the dead of the night, when my woes had at last been drowned in slumber, I was aroused by feeling a hand pressing upon my bosom; and starting up I saw, for there was a taper burning upon a table hard by, a man standing over me, holding a pillow in his hand, which, the moment I caught sight of him, he thrust into my face, and there endeavored to hold it, as if to suffocate me. The horror of death endowed me with a strength not my own, and the ruffian held the pillow with a feeble and trembling arm. I dashed it aside, leaped up in the bed, and beheld in the countenance of the murderer the features of the long missing and abandoned son, Abbot Skinner. His face was white and chalky, with livid stains around the eyes and mouth, the former of which were starting out of their orbits in a manner ghastly to behold, while his lips were drawn asunder and away from his teeth, as in the face of a mummy. He looked as if horror-struck at the act he was attempting; and yet there was something devilish and determined in his air that increased my terror to ecstacy. I sprang from the bed, threw myself on the floor, and, grasping his knees, besought him to spare my life. There seemed indeed occasion for all my supplications. His bloated and altered visage, the neglected appearance of his garments and person, and a thousand other signs, showed that the whole period of his absence had been passed in excessive toping, and the murderous and unnatural act which he meditated, manifested to what a pitch of phrenzy he had arrived by the indulgence. As I grasped his knees, he put his hand into his bosom, and drew out a poniard, a weapon I had never before known him to carry; at the sight of which I considered myself a dead man. But the love of life still prevailing, I leaped up, and ran to a corner of the room, where I mingled adjurations and entreaties with loud screams for assistance. He stood as if rooted to the spot for a moment; then dropping his horrid weapon, he advanced a few paces, clasped his hands together, fell upon his knees, and burst into tears, and all the while without having uttered a single word. But now, my cries still continuing, he exclaimed, but with a most wild and disturbed look—“Father I won't hurt you, and pray dont hurt _me!_”