we deem most relevant to a clear exposition of that which is to follow.  The latter will always bear in mind, that he who worked was a man drawing into the wane of life; that he bore about him the appearance of one who, either from incompetency or from some fatality of fortune, had been doomed to struggle through the world, keeping poverty from his residence only by the aid of great industry and rigid frugality; and that the idler was a youth of an age and condition that the acquisition of an entire set of habiliments formed to him a sort of era in his adventures.

“Yes.” exclaimed the indefatigable shaper of cloth, with a species of sigh which might have been equally construed into an evidence of the fulness of his mental enjoyment, or of the excess of his bodily labours; “yes, smarter sayings have seldom fallen from the lips of man, than such as the squire pour’d out this very day.  When he spoke of the plains of father Abraham, and of the smoke and thunder of the battle, Pardon, it stirred up such stomachy feelings in my bosom, that I verily believe I could have had the heart to throw aside the thimble, and go forth myself, to seek glory in battling in the cause of the King.”

The youth, whose Christian or ‘given’ name, as it is even now generally termed in New-England, had been intended, by his pious sponsors, humbly to express his future hopes, turned his head towards the heroic tailor, with an expression of drollery about the eye, that proved nature had not been niggardly in the gift of humour, however the quality was suppressed by the restraints of a very peculiar manner, and no less peculiar education.

“There’s an opening now, neighbour Homespun, for an ambitious man,” he said, “sin’ his Majesty has lost his stoutest general.”

“Yes, yes,” returned the individual who, either in his youth or in his age, had made so capital a blunder in the choice of a profession, “a fine and promising chance it is for one who counts but five-and-twenty; most of my day has gone by, and I must spend the rest of it here, where you see me, between buckram and osnaburghs—­who put the dye into your cloth, Pardy? it is the best laid-in bark I’ve fingered this fall.”

“Let the old woman alone for giving the lasting colour to her web; I’ll engage, neighbour Homespun, provided you furnish the proper fit, there’ll not be a better dress’d lad on the island than my own mother’s son!  But, sin’ you cannot be a general good-man, you’ll have the comfort of knowing there’ll be no more fighting without you.  Every body agrees the French won’t hold out much longer, and then we must have a peace for want of enemies.”

“So best, so best, boy; for one, who has seen so much of the horrors of war as I, knows how to put a rational value on the blessings of tranquillity!”

“Then you ar’n’t altogether unacquainted, good-man, with the new trade you thought of setting up?”

“I!  I have been through five long and bloody wars, and I’ve reason to thank God that I’ve gone through them all without a scratch so big as this needle would make.  Five long and bloody, ay, and I may say glorious wars, have I liv’d through in safety!”