shandied to and fro with great vivacity.  We need not tell the reader what period or event of the last seven years is pointed to in the following extract.  Mr. Touchandgo, it appears, was a great banker, who was “suddenly reported absent one foggy morning, with the contents of his till;” his daughter was to have been married to Mr. Crotchet but for this untoward event.  Here are two of the father’s letters from his new settlement, and a reply:—­

Dotandcarryonetown.  State of Apodidraskiana, April 1, 18—.

My dear Child,—­I am anxious to learn what are your present position, intention, and prospects.  The fairies who dropped gold in your shoe, on the morning when I ceased to be a respectable man in London, will soon find a talismanic channel for transmitting you a stocking full of dollars, which will fit the shoe, as well as the foot of Cinderella fitted her slipper.  I am happy to say, I am again become a respectable man.  It was always my ambition to be a respectable man, and I am a very respectable man here, in this new township of a new state, where I have purchased five thousand acres of land, at two dollars an acre, hard cash, and established a very flourishing bank.  The notes of Touchandgo and Company, soft cash, are now the exclusive currency of all this vicinity.  This is the land, in which all men flourish; but there are three classes of men who flourish especially, methodist preachers, slave-drivers, and paper-money manufacturers; and as one of the latter, I have just painted the word BANK, on a fine slab of maple, which was green and growing when I arrived, and have discounted for the settlers, in my own currency, sundry bills, which are to be paid when the proceeds of the crop they have just sown shall return from New Orleans; so that my notes are the representatives of vegetation that is to be, and I am accordingly a capitalist of the first magnitude.  The people here know very well that I ran away from London; but the most of them have run away from some place or other; and they have a great respect for me, because they think I ran away with something worth taking, which few of them had the luck or the wit to do.  This gives them confidence in my resources, at the same time that, as there is nothing portable in the settlement except my own notes, they have no fear that I shall run away with them.  They know I am thoroughly conversant with the principles of banking; and as they have plenty of industry, no lack of sharpness, and abundance of land, they wanted nothing but capital to organize a flourishing settlement; and this capital I have manufactured to the extent required, at the expense of a small importation of pens, ink, and paper, and two or three inimitable copperplates.  I have abundance here of all good things, a good conscience included; for I really cannot see that I have done any wrong.  This was my position:  I owed half a million of money; and I had a trifle in my pocket.  It was clear that this trifle could never find its