but the party had no sooner proceeded onward sufficiently far to be beyond the reach of shelter, when the treacherous clouds began to rally their scattered fragments and to open their renewed batteries on the wayfarers beneath; and in spite of a leather top to the chaise and a leather apron, the rain, confederating with a breeze that seemed to arise for the occasion, drenched both bride and bridegroom. In vain were handkerchiefs spread to shield the new hat; they only broke down its artificial flowers, which, like dying dolphins, emitted various hues, till the original whiteness of the hat was almost undiscoverable, and its paper crown and sides slouched over the wearer's head and face in shapeless ruin. The result was too distressing for the fortitude of the bride, and yielding to the last resort of female sufferance, she wept profusely and bitterly.

The poor groom loved his money, and had none to lose, nor had he been before aware of the expense and mischances of matrimony; but his wife must have a hat, and he accordingly satisfied his chagrin by a heavy malediction against hats that were fit for neither rain nor sunshine, and by vowing that he would himself select the next hat at the first proper opportunity. This was not long in occurring. They reached Philadelphia in the evening, without farther misadventure, and as they passed a milliner's shop, on the way to their intended tavern, where they desired to make a fair appearance, they stopped, and he selected a Leghorn which gave sufficient indications of durability, without being devoid of taste or fashion. The superiority of his judgment in this selection, over the frail purchases of his wife, was so gratifying to his vanity, that with a very mitigated reluctance he handed to the seller a twenty-dollar bank-bill, receiving in return the new hat and a ten-dollar note.

Thus re-furbished, and with a rather craving appetite, they arrived at their destined hotel, where, after a warm and bountiful meal, they concluded to stroll through some of the neighboring streets during the unoccupied time that remained of the evening. They passed several shops which both Heapupit and his wife looked at with particular interest; he with a reference to the shop which he was to open at Baltimore, she with an eye to the many pretty things that were displayed at the windows. She at length saw some gloves, and remembered that hers were utterly ruined; she had also money enough remaining of her own to purchase a pair, but she had left it at the tavern. With this intimation he offered to be her banker till their return to the inn, and they entered the shop and bought the gloves, paying therefor out of the ten-dollar bill which had been received at the purchase of the bonnet. The shopman looked at the bill, and then at the queer customers, and called another young man, who also looked. After the two had consulted together a moment, one of them put on his hat and walked out of the shop, while the other came back and said he had sent out to get change. The messenger soon returned, but brought another person with him, who proved to be a police-officer; and then Heapupit was informed that the bill was a counterfeit, and that he must be taken to the mayor's office to account for the manner in which he

came by the bill, and to ascertain if he had more of them in his possession.

This sad climax to the adventure of the bonnets was a good joke to Heapupit in all after times, when in the known possession of wealth, and the self-complacency of vanquished early difficulties, he could repeat it after dinner; as was usually his wont, whenever a good occasion occurred, and he wanted to amuse his guests or friends; but it was a sad difficulty at the time, and from which he extricated himself only by going with his accusers to the milliner's, and fortunately obtaining her admission that the note was an old counterfeit which she had inadvertently, in the twilight, passed to the gentleman.

After the war nothing farther was heard of Heapupit at the old boarding-house, and his shrewdness and his story were almost forgotten by all who had been its inmates, and the survivors of whom had themselves become old; when accidentally one of them, in passing lately a few days at Baltimore, ascertained that he had been a long time dead, and that he had left his property to a large family of children, of whom two only were sons. When he found that his end was approaching, he sent for these sons, and as a last act of paternal solicitude, told them that his estate was to be divided equally among his children and grand-children, according to the provisions of a will that would be found among his papers; and although, owing to the great number of his descendants, the share of each would amount to only a sufficiency for an eligible commencement of business, yet they severally could not fail from erecting thereon a large fortune, if they would carefully conduct their business on the principle of a precept which he duly, for their edification, repeated, with all the cunning emphasis that his waning strength would permit. The precept thus solemnly heralded at the hour of death was sufficiently characteristic of the old man's early associations and continued illiteracy. It was nothing but the homely, vulgar distich :

TICKLE me BILLY, do, do, do;

You tickle me, and I'll tickle you.'

He declared that its operation was founded in human nature, and therefore infallible, when the precept was prudently obeyed. He cautioned his sons against the vulgar error of striving to prosper by practices that are inconsistent with the prosperity of the persons with whom we deal. The true golden rule is, 'You tickle me, and I'll tickle you.' The man who acted thus would obtain wealth if he perseveringly directed his efforts to that object; or public honors, if he directed his efforts to that object. The maxim was the key by which could be unlocked all the avenues to prosperity.

The old man spoke to his sons in German, for that was the language in which his thoughts continued to flow more fluently than in English. The young men had heard the lesson very many times before, but as this was to be the last infliction, they listened to it as though they heard it for the first time, and were astonished with its sagacity and freshness. Thus comforted in his tenderest vanity, the old gentleman lay a short time silent and was dead.

The literary education of the sons had been sadly neglected, not from

any censurable indifference to the subject in the father, but from his want of knowledge. They had been taught to read a little, which accomplishments, with some skill in the elementary rules of arithmetic, he deemed, by a contrast with his own deficiencies, great attainments. The sons were consequently not qualified for any higher employments than the mercantile traffic which had been followed by the father, and into which they had become partially initiated. They possessed however dissimilar intentions, for while Frederick, the elder, determined to continue the old commercial business of his father, and in the old shop, the other, Peter, intended to see something of the world before he established himself finally in any place and in any given occupation. He felt also a strong desire to see Germany, the native country of his forefathers, where many of his paternal relations were still supposed to exist; and as they were known to be poor, Peter's vanity may possibly have desired to glorify itself a little by astonishing them with the splendor of the American branch. His share of the paternal spoils was a tenth of the whole, and when reduced into money, amounted to twenty thousand dollars, which, after a decent period of mourning, and with a view of killing two birds with one stone, he converted into cotton for the French market, and took passage with it in a ship for Havre; sorrowfully remarking to some of the cautious old friends of his father, who disliked these evidences of a roaming disposition, that grief was impairing his health, and that a change of scenery was absolutely necessary for his spirits. To remain in the old shop he knew would kill him, and he wondered how his brother could endure it; though Fred. always possessed strong nerves, and could bear any thing.

The ship in which Peter embarked experienced a succession of the most favorable winds, but was unfortunately stranded on a fatal sandbar, almost in sight of its destined port, and after all thoughts of danger had been dismissed from the minds of the passengers. They were all saved except two who were washed overboard and drowned; and most of the cargo was eventually saved and taken on shore by lighters, but it was badly damaged by the salt water. This was a contingency against which Peter had not guarded by any insurance, for where he ventured his life he thought he might venture his property. His loss was large, and he felt it severely; but at the commencement of life pecuniary losses are much mitigated by an exuberance of undefined hopes. He could not, however, help occasionally reflecting, that as yet the maxim of his father had been impracticable. Nobody had tickled him, though he felt keenly disposed to tickle in return, according to the injunction of the adage; that is, no person had conferred on him any benefit, which was the tickling that the adage meant, as he supposed, when interpreted literally. On the contrary, when the ship stranded, instead of being tickled, every man on board regarded himself alone, or seemed to vie with each other in throwing into the sea Peter's cotton, that the ship might be floated; and when his damaged cotton was in a position to be sold, every purchaser exaggerated its defects, and sought to obtain it ruinously low. His experience thus far was therefore any thing but propitious to his hopes; while the steadily occurring diminution of his patrimony irritated all the latent avarice which his father's precepts

had constantly fostered in him, and made him specially anxious that the tickling process should be commenced speedily.

As soon as he realized from the wreck of his venture all that could be obtained, he hastened to Paris, in the expectation that a change of scene would produce a favorable change in the operation of his maxim; but at Paris his funds diminished even faster than at Havre, for he could not resist participating expensively in the various novelties of that city of curiosities, in occasionally uniting in its more personal dissipations, and in becoming a victim to the swarms of sharpers, foreign and native, that make Paris their head-quarters, and every stranger their special object of attack. Still he could have borne equably these manifold depredations on his fortune, if he could have seen amid them a commencement of the process of becoming rich by a reciprocation of benefits; and for such a commencement his urgency increased in a direct proportion to the decrease of his resources. Like the ancient spinster immortalized by Russel, and the burden of whose inquiries was, 'Why do not the men propose, mamma?' so he could have sung as feelingly, Why do not the men tickle, papa?' His soul and all that was within him, yearned to exchange his silver franc pieces for golden Napoleons, but nobody would commence the traffic; and instead thereof every body that he gamed with seemed intent on fleecing him; shopkeepers, servants and restaurateurs imposed on him to the extent of their several opportunities; while the mass of the population, who could in no way use him to their advantage, spattered him with their equipages, or passed him with disregard. Once indeed he began to believe that the tickling process was about to be commenced in the person of a very agreeable young man, whom he met at a table d'hôte; and who, seeing that Peter was a stranger, courted his society assiduously. Peter was determined that he would interpose no obstacle to this auspicious indication, and he repaid the young man's politeness by copious draughts of wine. The two became shortly inseparable companions, but as the new friend introduced him to pretty expensive practices, the tickling with which Peter requited his friend cost much more than the friend's original tickle deserved; and Peter's remaining funds were soon so far exhausted, that unless he proceeded forthwith toward Germany his chance of ever reaching it would be frustrated. He accordingly lost no further time, and as he had no ceremonious congees to make, he paid his bills, and stepping into a diligence, was soon on his route toward Vienna, the residence of his kinsmen.

The journey was long, and cost him much more than he had anticipated, and before he arrived at its termination he would gladly have retraced his steps homeward, but he feared his remaining money would not supply the means; and when he finally reached Vienna, he was almost penniless. He lamented that he had ever left Baltimore, or that he had not returned thither before all his property had become dissipated; although he felt at his misadventures a degree of shame that might have restrained him from returning in his present condition had the ability been presented to him. He was fortunate in discovering his relations more readily than he could well have expected, but they were all situated in the lowest walks of life; and although he was him

self reduced to an equality with them in poverty, he almost repented, when too late, that he had acknowledged his consanguinity to so discreditable a kindred. From his external appearance, which greatly overrated his true condition, and from rumors that had reached them of the affluence of his father, they received him with diffidence and awe, and with every demonstration of grovelling affection; but when, from indications that could not be long mistaken, they eventually found that he had as little to bestow on them as they had to bestow on him, they remitted their respect, while they increased in good-will and cordiality. Feeling no longer any reason to believe that their poor provisions would be despised, they shared freely what they had with the necessitous wanderer, and made him as comfortable as their poverty would permit.

While Peter was thus in the home of his ancestors, realizing the early condition of his progenitors, his brother Frederick in Baltimore was endeavoring to establish himself gradually and slowly in the mercantile business, to which he had been trained from early life. He, like his brother, was looking hopefully to the precept which had been enjoined on them by their father, and he commenced the practice of it by hiring a good pew in the German Lutheran Church, and in sending to the minister a large ham and turkey as a Christmas present. When the good dominie was thus tickled, he thought Frederick a very amiable young man, who merited the good offices of all right-minded people, and he failed not to speak thus of him to members of the church, who in turn applauded him to others, and his shop soon became the mart for the whole congregation, from a principle of esprit du corps, that often actuates small communities. Frederick lost no time also in identifying himself with the German Benevolent Society, and at their annual festivals talking feelingly and copiously of the Fader-Land, not forgetting the more substantial requirement of a liberal annual contribution to the society's funds. The members and officers of the society being thus tickled in a spot that is apt to be sensitive, failed not to tickle back again through the medium of his merchandise and credit. But he unexpectedly received another benefit. The president of the society, an honest German, of considerable wealth, which he had acquired by patient industry, and in despite of the want of all literature, was so pleased with the patriotism of Frederick, that he courted his acquaintance, and Frederick ultimately became his son-in-law by a marriage with the old gentleman's eldest daughter, to the no small increase of the young man's consideration in Baltimore and prospective wealth. Nor did Frederick fail to patronize all the city newspapers, by liberally advertising in their columns; and as no class of men understand better the process of' you tickle me, and I'll tickle you,' than newspaper editors, they took every opportunity to allude to him in their respective papers as their publicspirited townsman, Frederick Heapupit, Esq., whose mercantile enterprise and integrity were an honor to the city.

In due progression he emerged from the chrysalis condition of a retailer to the splendors of a full-blown jobber, and no man was ever more friendly than he to the country dealers who resorted to Baltimore for their supplies of merchandise. If the dealers were young and gaý