during one hundred and fifty years, the Pont-Noirs spread over both continents.  Then they paused, and but two of the race—­chosen by lot—­were allowed to marry.  At the expiration of twenty-five years, a single male of the race, also chosen by lot, married, and became the father of the present Roseton.  On the day that Roseton was twenty-four years old, his father summoned him to his apartment.  ‘To-morrow,’ said he, ’the mystical two hundred years expire, and an estate of inconceivable magnitude will vest in the single Roseton—­if there be but one.  My son, my life is of less consequence than yours, since it is farther spent; but it still has sweetness, and it is the only life that I possess.  Here are three goblets of wine—­one is Scuppernong, the other two are harmless.  I will apportion our chances fairly, and will drink two; you shall drink one.  The lawyers are at hand to arrange the inquest, and to confer the title-deeds to the estate.’  In silence the son consented, and the devoted pair drank off the goblets as proposed, and at once sat down to a banquet prepared for them, and for the legal gentlemen attendant.  When the ices came in, the elder Roseton was carried out; and the heir of Pont-Noir, having seen the remains properly bestowed in a place of safety, and a special inquest held, finished the night with the counsellors in the enjoyment of a tempered hilarity, and rose next morning the possessor of wealth so boundless, so unspeakable, that my brain reels as I endeavor to grasp at even its outlying fragments.

In the hope of presenting some of its details to the reader, I procured, at an enormous expense, a Babbage calculating engine, and during three successive weeks worked it without pause upon the illimitable figures.  It then became clogged, and the village Vulcan, whose impartial hand corrects at once the time-pieces and the plowshares of the neighborhood, having knocked the machinery to pieces with a sledge, declared himself incompetent to explain and unable to repair.  My results therefore are maimed and imperfect, but I trust they will show that I have not exaggerated the difficulty of the process of reduction and estimation.

The fragmentary portions of the estate, then, are:  the entire capital stock of thirty-eight of the Banks of New York city (though here a wise policy has suggested the employment of various respectable names as those of shareholders, in order to protect these institutions from the fury of a mob); all that portion of the metropolis lying between the Twelfth and Twenty-second Avenues, from Canal Street to the suburb of Poughkeepsie, comprising of necessity the water rights and quarries; eighteen thousand millions of bullion specially deposited in the State Bank of Mississippi, to the order of the six New England Governors, trustees; the Pont-Noir mansion on Nultiel Street, surrounded by twenty-five acres of land, the very heart of the best New York residences, and variously estimated from six to eight