When the good Vicar of Wakefield was sent to prison by the villany of Thornhill, he expected on his entrance to find nothing but lamentations and various sounds of misery; but it was very different. The prisoners seemed all employed in one common design--that of forgetting thought in merriment or clamor. My own disappointment was equally great on the occasion I am relating--although there was less of clamor, probably, than that encountered by the Vicar--owing, most likely, to the lassitude incident to a fervid sun in July. But in all other respects, the prison scene depicted by Goldsmith one hundred years ago, would have answered very well for New-York in 1821--albeit we discerned not among them the shrewd features of a Jenkinson, and heard nothing of the cosmogony either of Sanchoniathon or Manetho. Among them all, however, there was not a countenance that could be recognized, and the writer began to flatter himself that he had been called by mistake. It was not so. Turning to a strongly grated window in another direction, whom should he see but his quondam friend Doctor Wheelwright--as sound asleep as though in attendance upon a lecture on the circulation of the blood, in the Medical College! On awaking him from his slumber, he appeared neither surprised nor chagrined at the interview. "The iron had not entered into _his_ soul," whatever might have been the case with others--as may be inferred from the following brief dialogue, in which my friend bore his part with all imaginable _non-chalance_:-- "Ah, doctor, is this you?" "How are you? Why shouldn't it be?" "But pray how came you here?" "Like most other honest people, for that matter--because I couldn't help it. But it's all come of a mistake." "Why, they have not mistaken you for another man, have they?" "I can't say exactly that; but I made a mistake in going into the lottery trade." "Then you didn't draw the high prize, eh?" "No: but I came plaguey nigh it though--three more of the figures would have given me two of them." "Indeed! you made the mistake in selecting the tickets, then? All you wanted was the right numbers!" "Exactly so: but it's no use to cry over spilt milk, you know; and besides, that fellow the manager has failed, so that it's all blanks and no prizes, and I am as well off as others. But if I could dream as well as that Mr. Clark did, with his eyes open, in Richmond, I should like to go into Yates & M'Intyre's next scheme. It's well enough to have honest managers, you know." "Very true, friend Wheelwright; but even then, it is the last 'way to wealth,' in my opinion, that any sensible man would take--on calculation." "Yes: but then it's well enough to be in luck's way, _arnt it_?"