"So it was settled by all present that you were to be cut without benefit of clergy." "I should not have consented to place myself under your protection, continued Mrs. M., but that I had no choice. Knowing no other person with whom I could travel, I reluctantly accompanied you; and I trust," said she, laughing, "that on the road, I shewed a very laudable aversion to the contaminating society of a _Porter_ and his wife." "No one can deny you that merit," said my wife. "Well, I cannot ask your pardon for it. There was no malice in the mistake, and I am almost as much annoyed at it as you can be. After you arrived here last night, the landlady insisted on knowing what business brought your husband to Washington; and I reluctantly told her what I had heard. At the bare idea of lodging a _Porter_, her feathers bristled up like those of a Barbary hen. Her yellow turban looked blue at the idea of such an indignity. She protested that she would have no _Porters_ in her house, nor no such rapscallions as had the impudence to go about dressed like decent people, to take in the flats. And so, my dear madam, you were turned out without much ceremony, and might have spent the night in the street, but for the information obtained by the boy at the office of the N---- I----, which, by giving another syllable to the profession of your husband, shewed beyond a doubt that you were entitled to christian treatment. You know the rest, and I trust we shall all of us when we remember these blunders, acknowledge the IMPORTANCE OF A SINGLE SYLLABLE." S. Extracted from a Virginia Newspaper, Printed in 1775. ON SLEEP. O sleep! what though of death thou art To be an image said, I wish thee still with all my heart, The partner of my bed. Thy company, soft sleep, then give, While in thy arms I lie; How sweet! thus, without life, to live! Thus, without death, to die! {78} For the Southern Literary Messenger. THE COTTAGE IN THE GLEN. In traversing that region of country in the wilds of Maine, that borders one of her finest rivers, if you look carefully on your right hand as you pass through the town of ----, by the post-road, you may observe a cart-path leading directly into a thick wood, where the trees tower in majesty and beauty to the very clouds, and look as if they had thus stood ever since the day when "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." Were it not for this same cart-path, with its three ridges of bright greensward, and its four lines of dusky brown, you might doubt whether the silent grandeur of the forest had ever echoed to the voice or the footstep of man.