John Earl, the subject of our story, was a true and veritable specimen of the genus _Jour Printer_,--intelligent, reckless, witty, improvident, competent, and unsteady,--floating on the great sea of life, regardless of either its winds or tides,--but little troubled about the present, and perfectly indifferent as to the future. John was the son of a Philadelphia printer, who died soon after his marriage, and the grief and destitution of our hero's mother so preyed upon her slender frame, that in giving birth to him she sunk under her sufferings--the wail of her offspring in this world was the knell which signalled her departure to another. That “the poor aids the poor,” was a saying verified in John's case, for a poor shoemaker in the house adjoining his home took charge of the bereaved infant, and sheltered it beneath his humble roof. The worthy son of Crispin had none of his own to trouble him, and his wife and himself, as their little charge budded into prattling childhood, grew daily more fond of him, until our hero held at least his third of interest in the household. At his own request he was permitted to learn the same business his father had been bred to, and with many injunctions, and a good suit of clothes, he was consigned at a proper age to a master printer. Soon after his transfer to his new home, his adopted parents bade him farewell. The old shoemaker had become infected with the western fever for emigration, and after long and repeated consultations with his wife, had concluded to depart to the land of rapid fortunes and unbounded enterprise. The parting was affectionate, and after many fond wishes for each other's happiness, our hero was left to the mercies of the “Art preservative.” We need not say that he grew wise in its mysteries, we will assume it as a matter of course. John was, or rather grew to be of a happy disposition, and viewed life as something resembling Pat's pig, a compound of alternate streaks of fat and lean, and whenever fortune looked through her blue spectacles upon his progress, he always set it down as his streak of lean, and grew happy amid his distresses, under the firm belief that his alternate slice of fat was next in order. He was a philosopher in the true sense of the word, for he let no occurrence of life rumple the couch of his repose--if he didn't like his quarters he took up his store of earthly wealth upon the end of a stick, and travelled. At the period of which we write, John had tasted four or five years of the responsibility of manhood, and had, from the day of his freedom, been an occasional visiter to all the Atlantic cities; he had now grown tired of his old tramping ground, and turned his eye westward. Who knows, thought John, but I may find a Mount Arrarat in the new land whereon to rest my ark! “The west, aye,” thought John, “that mighty corn field--that region of pork and plenty--land of the migrating sucker--haven of hope, and