papers, which we purchased _en masse_, we discovered a well written and somewhat extended manuscript, from which we intend to cull a few chapters for the amusement of our readers. CHAPTER I. It is now upwards of sixty years (says the packman) since I first took yard-wand in hand, and pack on back, addicting myself to much pedestrian travel, with the view of supplying dames with needles and shears, maidens with shawls and Bibles, and servant lads with watch-chains and waistcoat pieces. Having, at last, and after many wanderings and much converse with men, women, and children--not to mention dogs, which, in the hill-country, are numerous and noisy--having, I say, at last reached, as it were, a port or haven of rest, I sit here in my arm chair, with old Ponto on one side, and my not less faithful friend, the schoolmaster, on the other, keeping a calm look out over the ocean upon which I have been tossed, and recalling, as well as endeavouring in the best way I can to narrate, the somewhat varied incidents of my past life. It is quite true that I was never properly bred for any profession, but was simply educated in the reading of English, and in the keeping of accounts, and may, therefore, be supposed to be very unfit for anything like grand composition, or style of language; but in case this narrative should, by any accident, as they say, _see the light_, I must premise that I am possessed of advantages of which the reader, till I inform him, cannot possibly be apprised. I have the benefit of my friend the schoolmaster's strictures; of which, however, I shall only avail myself, in regard to the language, and that merely when I am fairly convinced that he is right and that I am wrong. With the wording of this very last sentence, Dominie Tawse finds fault, and insists upon it, that there is, I think he calls it, a "pleonasm" in it; but of this he has failed to convince me, and I therefore suffer the sentence to stand as it was originally written. In fact, I have a great respect for my good friend, the Dominie's opinions, in most occasions, but really, in regard to composition, his taste has been perverted by certain rules and regulations, to which he gives very hard names, and to which, in my opinion, he sacrifices both ease and sense.