Scorning a parent's kind control,
Rashly forsook his native hole.
The very moment he was out,
He look'd above, and round about:

"Oh! how extensive is the land!"

He cried; "the world how vast and grand!" The mole-hills to his untaught eyes,

Assumed the mountain's height and size. "Amazing!"- he proceeded thus:"I see the Alps and Caucasus!

And that (a stream he saw in motion)
Is surely the Atlantic Ocean!"
At length, proceeding to the shore,
Where fishermen had been before,
Some scatter'd Oysters there remain'd,
Of the large portion they had gain'd
Among them (one as oft we view,)
With shell upraised an inch or two,
Lay as in quiet, soft delight,
Exposing skin of healthy white;
So plump and tempting did it lie,

It caught the Rat's exploring eye.

"What do I see?" he cried: "a treat!

This must be most delightful meat;

At any rate, this day I dine

Better than any friend of mine:

I have been looking for good cheer;
Lucky am I to find it here."

Then, full of hope, lured by the smell,
He thrust his head within the shell.

The Oyster who had never met
With so much unpoliteness yet,—

And, surely, nothing could be ruder,Caught, crush'd and kill'd the bold intruder.

MORAL.

See the result of roaming wide
Without companion, friend or guide:
Who scorn advice can ne'er succeed;
Presumption must to ruin lead:
My youthful friends, remember that,
Nor imitate the foolish rat.

THE HIDDEN TREASURE.

"The man that would successful be in mischief,

Must, by some means or other, hook in woman."

GREAT public excitement, of any kind, is generally followed by moral and intellectual waste; as troubled waters necessarily leave behind them a long wake of froth and foam. The good seed, which nature sows in the mind of youth, needs a still sunny period to ripen; and though violent winds may strengthen the plants across which they sweep in fury, they leave them fixed in a thousand distorted and fantastic forms. Thus the war of '76 threw abroad upon the land innumerable varieties of all that is reckless, sensual, weak, depraved, and eccentric. However, society did not appear as in France, after its tremendous revolution like a body broken and dislocated on the rack, still twitching and heaving with the fearful remains of vitality. Here there was more matter for merriment than mourning; and though human nature was often degraded, it was usually in such a form that the sternest philosopher must have laughed, though reason bade him weep.

One of the most singular samples of humanity, which the new states could furnish, was Anthony Slack. He lived in the pleasant valley of Westminster, on the Vermont side of the Connecticut, and

owned land enough to have made him the wealthiest farmer in New England; but Anthony had been in the war, and bad acquired there a gentlemanly love of ease. As easily might the fattened pig have been set to plough the fields, as his obstinate master induced to work. Yet Anthony was not fat. On the contrary, his bones might be seen as plainly as the gaps of his own corn house; and it seemed as if the wind might have whistled through them as well. The jaundice had given a saffron hue to his clapboard visage; and his long white hair, uncut for many a year, fell in perpendicular profusion, like the rows of candles which ornament the rods of a tallow chandler. I never heard of but one thing which resembled Anthony Slack's face; and that was a bright yellow squash, which a mischievous urchin hung round with the silken tresses of the corn field, calling it Anthony's statue. Yet within this shackled and antiquated form was enshrined a soul full of modern ideas of republicanism. On this subject, Anthony was as learned, and as rational, as the savans of France, or the orators of America; and, better than either of his models, he exemplified his theory in practice. Buttons were of English manufacture, and it would have been highly ridiculous for a glorious son of liberty to have been made comfortable by the haughty upholders of crown and mitre; therefore, his thick homespun clothes were fastened together with thorns, which grew in great abundance around his garden. These garments were originally white; but as snuff happened, unfortunately, to be an American luxury, their color soon became as

dubious as the complexion of the owner. His shoes were his own handiwork; except, indeed, the occasional assistance he received from a notable niece. No consanguinity would have been suspected between this girl and her uncle. Her brown cheek had a slight flush in the centre, like the color which sometimes mantles one side of a bouncing russet apple; and her sturdy arms and ancles vied well with the trees which bear that golden fruit. Her eye was as blue as Lake Champlain in a clear, cold, winter's morning; and its roguish expression was in excellent keeping with the upward quirk of her full red lip. She was the reigning belle for many a mile, though the rustics could give no better account of her fascination than that there was something, somehow or other, more taking about Betsy Slack, than all the girls on the Connecticut. No one, however, appeared to make any abiding impression on the light hearted damsel. She laughed with all her lovers; and she quizzed them all. Yet her indifference did not seem allied to coquetry. It was simply an overrunning love of fun. She never asked the philosophic question, what was probably the end and aim of man's existence; but her thousand mischievous pranks, and her loud laugh, impetuous and sizzling, as the eruption of cider from a newly tapped barrel, proved that she thought they were all made for a joke. Not so thought Jacob Little, the least favored of all her knights. In good sooth, he was a dolorous, skin-and-bone man. His joints rattled against each other, as if a surgeon had stolen him from the sexton, and, finding breath in his body, had hud