But we need not report the catalogue.  Enough, that he proceeded to unfold (dwelling with an emphatic and precise description of each article in turn) the immense inventory of wares and merchandises with which he was about to establish.  The assortment was various enough.  There were pen-knives, and jack-knives, and clasp-knives, and dirk-knives, horn and wooden combs, calicoes and clocks, and tin-ware and garden seeds; everything, indeed, without regard to fitness of association, which it was possible to sell in the region to which he was going.

Ralph heard him through his list with tolerable patience; but when the pedler, having given it a first reading, proposed a second, with passing comments on the prospects of sale of each separate article, by way of recapitulation, the youth could stand it no longer.  Apologizing to the tradesman, therefore in good set terms, he hurried away to the completion of those preparations called for by his approaching departure.  Bunce, having no auditor, was compelled to do the same; accordingly a few hours after, the entire party made its appearance in the court of the village-inn, where the carriages stood in waiting.

About this time another party left the village, though in a different direction.  It consisted of old Allen, his wife, and daughter Kate.  In their company rode the lawyer Pippin, who, hopeless of elevation in his present whereabouts, was solicitous of a fairer field for the exhibition of his powers of law and logic than that which he now left had ever afforded him.  He made but a small item in the caravan.  His goods and chattels required little compression for the purposes of carriage, and a small Jersey—­a light wagon in free use in that section, contained all his wardrobe, books, papers, &c.—­the heirlooms of a long and carefully economized practice.  We may not follow his fortunes after his removal to the valley of the Mississippi.  It does not belong to the narrative; but, we may surely say to those in whom his appearance may have provoked some interest, that subsequently he got into fine practice—­was notorious for his stump-speeches; and a random sheet of the “Republican Star and Banner of Independence” which we now have before us, published in the town of “Modern Ilium,” under the head of the “Triumph of Liberty and Principle,” records, in the most glowing language, the elevation of Peter Pippin, Esq., to the state legislature, by seven votes majority over Colonel Hannibal Hopkins, the military candidate—­Pippin 39, Hopkins 32.  Such a fortunate result, if we have rightly estimated the character of the man, will have easily salved over all the hurts which, in his earlier history, his self-love may have suffered.