the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any direction, and to 'tumble up,' or sing out 'Yeo Heave Yeo!' on the shortest notice.'

"On the voyage, I shall endeavor,' said Mr. MICAWBER, 'occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son WILKINS will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs MICAWBER has her sea-legs on- an expression in which I hope there is no conventional impropriety - she will give them, I dare say, 'Little Tafflin.' Porpoises and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed athwart our bows; and, either on the starboard or larboard quarter, objects of interest will be continually descried. In short,' said Mr. MICAWBER, with the old genteel air, 'the probability is, all will be found so exciting, alow and aloft, that when the look-out stationed in the main-top cries 'Land-ho!' we shall be very considerably astonished!'

A picture by OSTADE, of which our author was reminded by the following scene, could scarcely have been more effective than his own pen-limning:

AMONG the great beams, bulks, and ring-bolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage, lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns, and elsewhere by the yellow day-light straying down a windsail or a hatchway, were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating, and drinking; some already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed to have but a week or two of life before them, and from ploughmen boldly carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins-every age and occupation appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the 'tween decks.'

Nothing could be more touchingly told than the renewed love for AGNES WICKFIELD, and the manner in which their united affections reached a joyous fruition. Again we say, 'Commend us to 'DAVID COPPERFIELD,' and again do we commend it, warmly and cordially, to our readers.

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. Since the throwing out, by the envious and interested committee of the American Institute,' of our ‘Patent SelfRegulating Back-Action Hen-Persuader,' a most ingenious and simple contrivance for promoting the increase of devourable eggs in 'the markets of the world,' we have not taken much interest in inventions; deeming that inventors themselves are not sufficiently appreciated, and that, as a general thing, if they possessed a proper 'self-respect' they would keep their 'specifications' to themselves, and their 'improvements' for private use. We hope that the inventor of 'The North-American Fly-Trap,' spoken of below by a pleasant western correspondent, will have no occasion to lament the 'ingratitude of republics:''Among the classified list of patents granted by the Patent Office in the year 1848, according to the report of EDMUND BURKE, then commissioner, Kentucky, it appears, has registered seven; and among these, one WILSON SHREVE, under letters-patent, claims all the rights, benefits, etc., accruing from his invention, a Oh! -'Fly-Trap.' Think of it, Master KNICK.! the weary days and sleepless nights WILSON SHREVE must have passed, ere the crude first idea, the initium, resolved itself into form and fashion, and the fly-trap was the result! NEWTON's apple, GALILEO's pendulum, ALFRED's spider, were the first hints, the suggestions,' the faint glimmerings of the spark that afterward burned up to goodly-sized flames, as the times go, but the world is left in profound ignorance, in worse than Cimmerian darkness, of the beginning, the 'working out' and the grand principle, that acts and moves and keeps in being this bugbear of the blue-bottles. Is it an intricate combination of wheels, springs, and elastic pieces of whale-bone, luring the entomological specimen into fancied security by offering a resting-place to its weary wings, when whizz! crack! and the deluded victim is knocked into a fricassee

state, a 'bonne-bouche' for an epicurian spider? Is it a labyrinth into which the erratic wanderer is reduced to creep when night has

"THROWN her mantle o'er the world

And pinned it with a star?'

and then, after wandering about for days and days, amid convolutions and passages, cross-chambers and avenues, gets its suctorial brain-bewildered in the maze; makes two or three desperate rectangular charges to force its way through, and at last falls, worn out and exhausted, on its back, convulsively draws up its six legs, hums a dying air, and goes into an eternal sleep, dreaming of the merry jousts with its companions, around the sunny window-sill, in the long summer mornings? Or rather is not the foundation, the substratum, nay, the whole edifice itself, treacle? Dark indeed was the day for the musca race, when Mr. WILSON SHREVE, sitting in his easy chair after a hearty dinner, endeavoring to covet the transient but sweet embraces of the drowsy god, felt on the end of his nose that provoking thrill, that most agonizing of sensations, occasioned by the sudden descent of a member of that race, ,who mistook the shining apex for a pinnacle of peace, an 'oäsis,' an Ararat, where he might rest his wings ere he rejoined the reel. Alarming was the sudden start, and fierce was the rubbing of the said proboscis. But gradually the weary hand ceased its manipulations, the heavy head again inclined itself forward, the right leg, crossed in satisfaction over the knee of the left, imperceptibly almost, was slowly sliding off, and Mr. WILSON SHREVE was again in that abnormal state, a foreigner just within the confines of dreamland, but not yet naturalized nor acclimated, when whirr ! — buzz!—zip! — and the volant persecutor darted in and out of his left auricular. One open-handed, murderous swoop, and Mr. SHREVE started into full consciousness that his tricksy ARIEL' was off, and was now very probably chasing a brother or sister fly, with very doubtful intentions, through the open door-way. Entrenching his head behind a curtain-calico-figured handkerchief, again Mr. SHREVE resigned himself to repose. Again did the 'familiar spirit,' attracted by the aroma arising from the stains of hoe-cake, wander about in rectangular eccentricity over the veil, until at length a breach is found, where the handkerchief, falling into such graceful folds as only silk can ever attain to, raises an arch like a mouse-hole. It enters. A pause; ten seconds; twenty; a snore; thirty-'DARNATION!' echoes from the stinging lips of the excited Mr. SHREVE, as he springs to his feet, rubbing them, not the feet, but the lips, over which the wily intruder had just galloped, making as many impressions on the delicate epidermis with his six little claws as if he had been a milaped, and with lowering brow, flashing eye, open pen-knife, and a pile of shingles, the great inventor swears a terrible oath, and goes to work. Time rolls on. A poor but proud nation is taught the worldlesson that those two adjectives are too antagonistical to be entertained simultaneously; the conqueror comes home, and seized by popular applause, is hurried neck and shoulders into that much-envied but very uncomfortable piece of cabinet furniture, the presidential chair. The car of anarchy and confusion, bowled along by the most ungovernable team that ever yet wore traces, slaves with their hot blood up, crashes over Europe. The fell destroyer Cholera steals on in its noisome night-marches, but WILSON SHREVE thinks on, whittles on, until THE FLY-TRAP is finished. We feel it is not for us; that we are not sufficiently advanced on the road to perfectability; but in the distant future another genius will arise, like the glorious sun, a SMITH or a TOMPKINS, and eleminate such ideas as will show the perfect practicability of altering and applying this, the brain-child' of the nineteenth century, to the utter and

total extermination of the whole culex tribe. Then will the weary denizen of the north, in the pauses of his heavy sleep, and the red-ripe maiden of the sunny south, in her afternoon siesta, murmur blessings on the name of WILSON SHREVE.' . . . READER, you have many and many a time heard from the writer of this original 'Sonnet to a Rich Rhymester,' and never once, we venture to say, without pleasure:

THOU purse-proud POET! with as airy foot

The clumsy camel through the needle's eye
Might gaily skip a minuet - or put

In competition with the summer fly
His heavy gaitas thine, if matched with him
Who, like a sinewy racer, to the field
Comes, light of ancle, with elastic limb,

And heart of temper too serene to yield

In the proud contest, where the gift of strength
And speed and courage win the Olympian meed.
Thine's a laborious pace; the power of length
And persevering dullness-he, with one

Immortal bound, outstrips thee like a steed
Fresh in the harness of his lord the sun!

WE have laughed furtively,' as our greatest American novelist would say, at the following, received in a recent epistle from a Kentucky correspondent: 'While the cholera was here last summer, a remarkably sharp specimen of 'Young America' managed to keep body and boots together by familiarly entering the doors of any of the stores or offices, and telling his story in a way to win a few dimes, on the score of charity or impudence. To the respectable portion of the community he delivered the stereotyped history of 'Father died in New-Orleans, and I'm a-travelin' home to New-York to see me mother; won't ye please, Sir, gi' me a dime?' But to me, whom he knew better, he told a most amusing tale of his adventurs. English born, he had shipped while only fourteen years old on board a New-Orleans and Liverpool packet, made two or three trips, became disgusted, and taking French leave at NewOrleans, started to walk' across the country' to New-York! He spent his last shilling on the road, and somewhere in Ohio hired himself to a farmer, who sent him out on the following morning to 'break up' a piece of ground. In the course of an hour Toм made his appearance at the house, very much flushed in the face, as if ploughing the earth was rather more tedious a business than ploughing the domain of Father NEPTUNE. 'Well, Tom,' said the old squatter, 'what's the matter? How did you get along?' 'She's wrecked, Sir !' was the reply. 'Wrecked !' echoed his employer; 'why, Tom, what do you mean?' 'Why, Sir,' said Tom, bringing his hand up to his carroty poll, 'the craft was n't well ballasted, Sir, and would n't obey the tiller; and though I held her hard a-port, she lurched off a-lee, and run on the breakers. You'll find her out yonder, Sir, due nor'-east, on her beam-ends, with her cut-water hard in a stump, the larbo'd bull on the starb'd side, the starb'd bull on the larb'd, and the old mare foul o' the rigging!' Tom was discharged forthwith.' Ir the correspondent who sends us the following only writes in his articles half as well as he does in his note to the EDITOR hereof, he will be a thricewelcome contributor : 'I hope I may not seriously trespass upon your time, but having heard that you are in the habit of paying for acceptable contributions to your magazine, I take the liberty of asking for information upon the point; and when I propose writing for your periodical, should you deem me presumptuous in the manner or matter of the suggestion, have the consideration to lay to the door of necessity what otherwise might seem to savor of self-esteem, perhaps vanity. I do not pro

pose to myself, any literary distinction; if so, I should not write, certainly, but for my own credit, would leave the quill in its pristine goose, where it might be wielded with advantage to its proprietor, rather than betray a relationship to that species of bird by any unsuccessful attempts I might make to soar upon the usurped pinion. Be assured, then, it is not any ephemeral fame whose possession is craved, but the realization of the more practical bread-and-butter; for it is that natural bias in favor of something to eat, inherent, if not in our hearts, at least in our stomachs, that induces me to bore you with this application. I am pursuing the practice of the law; whether I shall ever catch up with it or not, is 'in nubibus,' for the chase is a desperate one, and the game as yet palpably out of sight; and it occurred to me, that if I could, by any assiduous efforts of my own, obtain from Literature any of those more substantial benefits which the Law in its majesty has thus far denied me, it would be a vastly fortunate circumstance. In view of these remarks,' as the preachers say, I would not have you to think that I am at the point of starvation, or as yet materiallly in the vicinity of that apex: this communication is not intended as an aperient to move your bowels of compassion;' you must undoubtedly be worried extensively by applications of this kind, and mostly by those who are the sole discoverers of their own latent genius and fitness for periodical writing. Although the boots of poverty do not actually pinch the corns of my daily life, yet the means of my subsistence are not my own; and a desire for independence is what induced our fathers to fall upon the heights of BREED's, now called BUNKER'S, Hill, and to runaway upon the plains of Camden - GATES, I believe, being general upon the latter occasion; see State Papers, passim. Upon the other hand, I do not wish to manifest an overweening confidence in my abilities of what I may be able to do, yourself of course will be the judge; and if upon trial you should deem my productions worth reading, let them be received, but not otherwise; for I'd see you in Guinea, or any other sea-port town on the Mediterranean, before you should take them out of mere charity. I confess, Sir, I feel some degree of anxiety as to how this epistle may be received. Your own literary character as EDITOR of the KNICKERBOCKER, together with the fact of your being twin-brother to the elegant author of Ollapodiana,' makes the ground whereon I venture to tread rather perilous. To me, therefore, your approbation on these grounds is peculiarly desirable; but nevertheless, Sir, do not hesitate to speak your candid opinion. If you think I'm a fool, say so like a major-general. It would not wound my vanity in the least, for I should suspect you were more than half right: or, if this intrusion is entirely unwarrantable, statements to that effect would be received by me in a christian frame of mind. I have of course no name nor reputation to render my services desirable, nor to enhance them in the eyes of the public. The TUB must emphatically stand as the proverb suggests.' We shall willingly leave it to our readers to say whether or no the writer of the foregoing is a fool.' We think not, decidedly. . . . 'A FEW Sabbaths since,' writes a correspondent from Rondout on the Hudson, 'our minister was impressing upon his hearers the duty of a greater regard for the services of the day of Thanksgiving, set apart by the Governor, and was informing them that on that day he would preach a sermon at that place, and he wished them all to attend, to render, in a proper manner, acknowledgments for the many benefits of the past year; for a season of health, and bountiful harvests, etc. Here a little wiry man, in a blue coat, with metal buttons, and a very elevated collar, popped up from his seat, and squeaked out: 'Dominie, I wish you'd jest give the 'Tater Rot a leettle tech in that sarmon o' your'n. It's ben dreadful bad with

us !' . . . Ir any of our readers should fancy that the following' Babylonish Ditty,' which we derive from the facile pen of a favorite contributor, belongs to an 'easy style of thing to write,' let them try to 'do' a similar thing themselves, and let us see how they'll ' rhyme it,' preserving in the mean time the requisite sense and melody:

MORE than several years have faded, since my heart was first invaded
By a brown-skinned, grey-eyed siren, on the merry old South Side ;'
Where the mill-flume cataracts glisten, and the agile blue fish listen
To the fleet of phantom schooners floating on the weedy tide.

"T is the land of rum and romance, for the old South Bay is no man's,
But belongs (as all such places should belong) to Uncle SAM;
There you'll see the amorous plover, and the woodcock in the cover,
And the silky trout all over, underneath the water-dam.

There amid the sandy reaches, in among the pines and beeches,
Oaks, and various other kinds of old primeval forest trees,
Did we wander in the noon-light, or beneath the silver moon-light,
While in ledges sighed the sedges to the salt salubrious breeze.

Oh! I loved her as a sister- often, often times I kissed her,
Holding prest against my vest her slender soft seductive hand,
Often by my midnight taper, filled at least a quire of paper
With some graphic ode, or sapphic, 'To the nymph of Babyland.'

Oft we saw the dim blue highlands, Coney, Oak, and other, islands,
(Moles that dot the dimpled bosom of the sunny summer sea,)
Or 'mid polished leaves of lotus, whereso'er our skiff would float us,
Any where, where none could notice, there we sought alone to be.

Thus till summer was senescent, and the woods were iridescent,
(Hectic-hints, and dolphin tints, of what was shortly coming on,)
Did I worship AMY MILTON, (fragile was the faith I built on,)
Then we parted; broken hearted, I, when she left Babylon."

As upon the moveless water lies the motionless frigata,

Flings her spars and spidery outlines lightly on the lucid plain,
But whene'er the fresh breeze bloweth, to more distant oceans goeth,
Never more the old haunt knoweth, never more returns again:

So is woman, evanescent; shifting with the shifting present;
Changing like the changing tide, and faithless as the fickle sea;
Lighter than the wind-blown thistle; falser than the fowler's whistle
Was that coaxing piece of hoaxing - AMY MILTON's love to me:

Yes, than transitory bubble! floating on this sea of trouble,
Though the sky be bright above thee, soon will sunny days be gone;
Then when thou 'rt by all forsaken, will thy bankrupt heart awaken
To those golden days of olden times in happy Babylon!

A PHILADELPHIA friend, who writes a story as well as he tells one, which is a rare art, sends us, among others, the subjoined: 'A certain genuine Deutscher in this city has distinguished himself of late years by very remarkable actions, but nothing richer than the following: Resolving to be divorced from his wife, he put the case into the hands of an eminent lawyer, and departed for the south, where he was absent for a year. On returning, he walked into the 'legal den,' and with head bolt upright, gravely inquired: 'How doesh it co mit ter divorce petween me und mine vife?' 'Why really, Meinherr, I haven't been able to do much during your absence, but now you're back, we'll go ahead.' 'Yaw; den be so goot as to inform me vot te expenses might have peen ven de diforce will be concluded.' The man of law, after calculating and summing up the items, informed him that the 'damage' would probably amount to two hundred and fifty dollars when the divorce should be obtained. 'Very well den,' replied Meinherr, 'I vould ask you, if to save de expenses,