have been Collycinth, but I forgot the proper word. Howsumever, he did eat two large ones, and promises to cum round. It would make you split your sides with laffing to see me mismerize our Thomas, & make him go into all sorts of odd postures & anticks & capers Like a Dotterel, for whatever I do he must coppy to the snapping of a finger, and cant object to nuthing, for, as the song says, I've got his Will and his Power. Likewise you can make the Sombulist taste watever you think propper, so I give him mesmerized Warter, witch at my Command is transmoggrified on his pallet to Shampain, & makes him as drunk as Old Gooseberry, and then he will jump Jim Crow, or go down on his bended knees and confess all his peckaddillos, Witch is as diverten as reading the Misteries of Parris. The wust to mesmerize is Reuben the Cotchman, not that he's too wakeful, for he's generally beery, And goes off like a shot, but he wont talk in his sleep, only snores. The Page is more passable and very clarevoying. He have twice seed a pot of goold in the middle flower-bed. But the gardner wont have it dug up. And he says there is a skelliton bricked into the staircase wall, so that we never dares at nite to go up alone. Also he sees Visions, and can profesy and have foretold two Earthquacks and a great Pleg. Cook wants to mismerize too, but wat with her being so much at the fire, and her full habbit, she always goes off to sleep afore the Sombulist. But Sukey can do it very well. Tho in great distress about Mrs. Hardin's babby witch Sukey offered to mismerize in lieu of syrrup of Poppies or Godfrey's Cordial, but the pore Innocent wont wake up agin, nor havent for two hole days. As would be a real blessin to Muthers and Nusses in a moderate way, but mite be carried too far, and require a Crowners Quest. As yet that's the only Trial we have made out of the House, But we mean to mismerize the Baker, and get out of him who he really does mean to offer to, for he is quite a General Lover. Sum pepel is very dubious about Mismerizing, and some wont have it at any price; but Missis is for it, very strong, and says she means to belive every attom about it till sumboddy proves quite the reverse. She practises making passes every day, and is studyin Frenology besides, for she says, between the two you may play on pepel's pennycraniums like a Piany, and put them into any Key you like. And of course her fust performance will be a Master-piece on the Head of the Fammily. To be shure it seems a wonderful power to be give to one over ones Fellow Creturs, and as mite be turned to Divilish purposes, But witch I cant stop to pint out, for makin the beds. To tell the truth, with so much Mismerizing going on, our Wurks has got terrible behind hand. And the carpits has not been swep for a week. So no more at present in haste from Your luving Friend, ELIZA PASSMORE. P.S. A most remarkable Profesy! The Page have foretold that the Monkey some day would bite Missis, & lo! and behold he have flone at her, and made his teeth meet in her left ear. If that ant profesying I don't know what is. THE ELM TREE: A DREAM IN THE WOODS. And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees. AS YOU LIKE IT. TWAS in a shady Avenue, There came to me A sad and solemn sound, Amongst the leaves it seem'd to sigh, No breeze there was to stir the leaves; No quake of earth to heave the roots, No bird was preening up aloft, From bough to bough to spring; Had ne'er a hole To hide a living thing! No scooping hollow cell to lodge Or forest cat That nightly loves to prowl, But still the sound was in my ear, Where lofty Elms abound. O hath the Dryad still a tongue The olden time is dead and gone; From Poplar, Pine, and drooping Birch, No living sound E'er hovers round, Unless the vagrant breeze, The music of the merry bird, But busy bees forsake the Elm That bears no bloom aloft The Finch was in the hawthorn-bush, The Blackbird in the croft; And among the firs the brooding Dove, Yet still I heard that solemn sound, And each minuter shoot; From the rugged trunk and mossy rind, And from the twisted root. From these, a melancholy moan; No sign or touch of stirring air In still and silent slumber hush'd From that MYSTERIOUS TREE ! A hollow, hollow, hollow sound, As is that dreamy roar |