When observing his well-known handsome form and ever-benignant countenance, about the streets of York, we lads at school were wont, we remember, generally to conjecture that his ramblings were limited to certain bounds. He himself used to dwell with an amount of complacency on the skill acquired in carpentry during these intervals of involuntary leisure, and on the practical results to himself from that skill, not only in the way of pastime, but in the form of hard cash for personal necessities. Many were the panelled doors and Venetian shutters in York which, by his account, were the work of his hands. Once he was on the point of becoming a professional actor. Giving assistance now and then as an anonymous performer to Mr. Archbold, a respectable Manager here, he evinced such marked talent on the boards, that he was seriously advised to adopt the stage as his avocation and employment. The Theatre of Canadian public affairs, however, was to be the real scene of his achievements. Particulars are here unnecessary. Successively sailor and soldier (and in both capacities engaged in perilous service); a lawyer, a legislator in both Houses; Speaker twice in the Popular Assembly; once Prime Minister; knighted for gallantry, and appointed an Aide-de-camp to the Queen; dignified with a baronetcy; by the marriage of a daughter with the son of a nobleman, made the possible progenitor of English peers--the career of Allan MacNab cannot fail to arrest the attention of the future investigator of Canadian history. With our local traditions in relation to the grandiose chieftain above described, one or two stories are in circulation, in which his young kinsman Allan amusingly figures. Alive to pleasantry--as so many of our early worthies in these parts were--he undertook, it is said, for a small wager, to prove the absolute nudity of the knees, &c., of his feudal lord when at a ball in full costume: (the allegation, mischievously made, had been that the Chief was protected from the weather by invisible drawers.) The mode of demonstration adopted was a sudden cry from the ingenuous youth addressed to the Chief, to the effect that he observed a spider, or some such object running up his leg!--a cry instantly followed by a smart slap with the hand, with the presumed intention of checking the onward course of the noxious thing. The loud crack occasioned by the blow left no room for doubt as to the fact of nudity; but the dignified Laird was somewhat disconcerted by the over zeal of his young retainer.