friendly greeting, as if it should say, "How fare ye, brother?"
He is a retired sea-captain, wrapped in some nameless garment of the
pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course towards the Marine
Insurance Office, there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck, with a
crew of old seadogs like himself. The blast will put in its word
among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next I
meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman, with a cloak flung hastily over
his shoulders, running a race with boisterous winds, and striving to
glide between the drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has
blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest of a doctor!
See that little vagabond,--how carelessly he has taken his stand right
underneath a spout, while staring at some object of curiosity in a
shop-window! Surely the rain is his native element; he must have
fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do.

Here is a picture, and a pretty one. A young man and a girl, both
enveloped in cloaks, and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes; but he is in his
dancing-pumps; and they are on their way, no doubt, to sonic cotillon-
party, or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments included.
Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward by a
vision of festal splendor. But, ah! a most lamentable disaster.
Bewildered by the red, blue, and yellow meteors, in an apothecary's
window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods, at the corner of two
streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not
be, I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of
your fate, as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew.
Do ye touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-