Mrs. Sackville commended the poor woman's resolution, and busied herself putting up some medicines for the child, and giving directions about them, and was so occupied with her benevolent duty, that she gave little heed to Edward's continued exclamations. "Oh, mother! how beautiful the colour of the water of the Niagara is!" "Mother, does not it give you sublime feelings to think you are on the Niagara?" "Mother, does not Lake Erie look grand from here?" &c. &c. &c. Suddenly his attention was diverted, and he was attracted to the extremity of the boat, where Tristy, the little "Flibbertigibbet" we have before mentioned, was exhibiting various feats for the amusement of the passengers. He was a little, pale, wizened-face fellow, with a bleared and blood-shot eye, his hair black, strait, and matted to his head, his mouth defiled with tobacco, and in short his whole appearance indicating the depravity of one experienced in vice. He dislocated the joints of his fingers, stood firmly on his head, and performed some of the difficult exploits of a tumbler; and when he had done all this, "Come, gentlemen," said he, "shall I sing you a song, or pray you a prayer? I'll suit your fancy with either for a sixpence." "No, no; none of your prayers, you little son of the old one," said one of the men; "we shall have your master with the cloven foot after us before we get to the shore: you may sing us a song, though, only let it be a decent one." "Oh, well gentlemen, suit yourselves--I am a Jack at all trades, you know--that is to say, at any of the trades my father, that is dead and gone, followed before me." "Trades! your father followed no trade, but the trade of the light-fingered gentry." "I beg your pardon, sir; my dad was a noted man in his day:--a carpenter, joiner, tooth-drawer, barber, gardener, studying-master, dancing-master, whipping-master, fiddling-master, school-master, music-master, play-actor, &c. &c.--all of which I am yours gentlemen to command. Now for the song:--there is Erie, and my song is Perry's glorious victory." He then half sung, half recited, a ballad recounting Perry's gallant exploits on the lake. It was impossible for a compassionate being to see the little outcast without an emotion of pity; or not to be affected by the weak and almost infantine tones of his voice. "How old are you, child?" asked Mr. Sackville, as the boy concluded his song, and opened his mouth to catch the sixpence that was tossed to him. "How old? I do not justly remember; but there is my age set down in our family Bible, as my father called it, by his own honored hand, on the day he got through, as I have heard him say, his fourth term of service at the state-castle." Mr. Sackville took from the child's hand a filthy little dream-book, on the title-page of which was scrawled, and scarcely legible,--"Tristram McPhelan, born in the Bridewell, city of New-York, on Friday--bad luck to him--March 1807." "You are then but eleven years old."