way your face is turned this afternoon."

"I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather," replied the
conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,
and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."

I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
to the camp-meeting, and had made this wagon their rendezvous by the
way. The showman now proposed that, when the shower was over, they
should pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the
policy of these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.

"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."

This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
no title to be included in it. Having already satisfied myself as to
the several modes in which the four others attained felicity, I next
set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were peculiar to the
old "Straggler," as the people of the country would have termed the
wandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended to familiarity with
the Devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight
in his way of life, by possessing some of the mental and moral
characteristics, the lighter and more comic ones, of the Devil in
popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for