droll fellow that, I take it from his name: but all colonists are queer fellows, eh ?”

'Bad news from home?" said Mr. Slick, who had noticed my abstraction. "No screw loose there, I hope. You don't look as if you liked the flavour of that ere nut you are crackin' of. Who's dead? and what is to pay now?"

I read the letter and the memorial, and then explained from my own knowledge how numerous and how valuable were the services of my deceased friend, and expressed my regret at not being able to serve the memorialist.

"Poor woman!" said Mr. Hopewell, "I pity her. A colonist has no chance for these things; they have no patron. In this country merit will always obtain a patron—in the provinces never. The English are a noble-minded, generous people, and whoever here deserves encouragement or reward, is certain to obtain either or both: but it must be a brilliant man, indeed, whose light can be perceived across the Atlantic." I entertain, Sir," I said, "a very strong prejudice against relying on patrons. Dr. Johnson, after a long and fruitless attendance on Lord Chesterfield, says: 'Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work, through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.'

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Ah!" said Mr. Hopewell, "a man who feels that he is wrong, is always angry with somebody else. Dr. Johnson is not so much to be admired for the independence that dictated that letter, as condemned for the meanness and servility of seven years of voluntary degradation. It is no wonder he spoke with bitterness; for, while he censured his Lordship, he must have despised himself. There is a great difference between a literary and political patron. The former is not needed, and a man does better without one; the latter is essential. A good book, like good wine, needs no bush; but to get an office, you want merits or patrons; merits so great, that they cannot be passed over, or friends so powerful, they cannot be refused."

"Oh! you can't do nothin', Squire," said Mr. Slick, "send

it back to Old Marm: tell her you have the misfortin to be a colonist; that if her son would like to be a constable, or a Hogreave, or a thistle-viewer, or sunthin' or another of that kind, you are her man: but she has got the wrong cow by the tail this time. I never hear of a patron, I don't think of a frolic I once had with a cow's tail; and, by hanging on to it like a snappin' turtle, I jist saved my life, that's a fact.

<< 'Tell you what it is, Squire, take a fool's advice, for once. Here you are; I have made you considerable well-known, that's a fact; and will introduce you to court, to king and queen, or any body you please. For our legation, though they can't dance, p'raps, as well as the French one can, could set all Europe a dancin' in wide awake airnest, it it chose. They darsent refuse us nothin', or we would fust embargo, and then go to war. Any one you want to know, I'll give you the ticket. Look round, select a good critter, and hold on to the tail, for dear life, and see if you hante a patron, worth havin'. You don't want none yourself, but you might want one some time or another, for them that's a coming arter you.

"When I was a half grow'd lad, the bears came down from Nor-West one year in droves, as a body might say, and our woods near Slickville was jist full of 'em. It warn't safe to go a-wanderin' about there a doin' of nothin', I tell you. Well, one arternoon, father sends me into the back pastur', to bring home the cows. 'And,' says he, 'keep a stirrin', Sam, go ahead right away, and be out of the bushes afore sunset, on account of the bears, for that's about the varmints' suppertime.'

"Well, I looks to the sky, and I sees it was a considerable of a piece yet to daylight down, so I begins to pick strawberries as I goes along, and you never see anything so thick as they were, and wherever the grass was long, they'd stand up like a little bush, and hang in clusters, most as big and twice as good, to my likin', as garden ones. Well, the sun, it appears to me, is like a hoss, when it comes near dark it mends its pace, and gets on like smoke, so afore I know'd where I was, twilight had come peepin' over the spruce tops.

"Off I sot, hot foot, into the bushes, arter the cows, and as always eventuates when you are in a hurry, they was further back than common that time, away ever so fur back to a brook, clean off to the rear of the farm, so that day was gone afore I

got out of the woods, and I got proper frightened. Every noise I heerd I thought it was a bear, and when I looked round a one side, I guessed I heerd one on the other, and I hardly turned to look there, before I reckoned it was behind me, I was e'en a'most skeered to death.

"Thinks I, I shall never be able to keep up to the cows if a bear comes arter 'em and chases 'em, and if I fall astarn, he'll just snap up a plump little corn fed feller like me in less than half no time. Cryin', says I, though, will do no good. You must be up and doin', Sam, or it's gone goose with you.'

'So a thought struck me. Father had always been a-talkin' to me about the leadin' men, and makin' acquaintance with the political big bugs when I growed up and havin' a patron, and so on. Thinks I, I'll take the leadin' cow for my patron. So I jist goes and cuts a long tough ash saplin, and takes the little limbs off of it, and then walks along side of Mooley, as meachin' as you please, so she mightn't suspect nothin', and then grabs right hold of her tail, and yelled and screamed like mad, and wallopped away at her like anything.

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'Well, the way she cut dirt was cautionary; she cleared stumps, ditches, windfalls and everything, and made a straight track of it for home as the crow flies. Oh, she was a clipper: she fairly flew again, and if ever she flagged, I laid it into her with the ash saplin, and away we started agin, as if Old Nick himself was arter us.

"But afore I reached home, the rest of the cows came a bellowin', and a roarin' and a-racin' like mad arter us, and gained on us too, so as most to overtake us, when jist as I come to the bars of the cow yard, over went Mooley, like a fox, brought me whap up agin 'em, which knocked all the wind out of my lungs and the fire out of my eyes, and laid me sprawlin on the ground, and every one of the flock went right slap over me, all but one-poor Brindle. She never came home agin. Bear nabbed her, and tore her most ridiculous. He eat what he wanted, which was no trifle, I can tell you, and left the rest till next time.

Don't talk to me, Squire, about merits. We all want a lift in this world; sunthin' or another to lay hold on, to help us along we want the cow's tail.

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Tell your friend, the female widder, she has got hold of the wrong cow by the tail in gettin' hold of you (for you are nothin' but a despisable colonist); but to look out for some

patron here, some leadin' man, or great lord, to clinch fast hold of him, and stick to him like a leech, and if he flags (for patrons, like old Mooley, get tired sometimes), to recollect the ash saplin, to lay it into him well, and keep him at it, and no fear but he'll carry her through. He'll fetch her home safe at last, and no mistake, depend on it, Squire. The best lesson that little boy could be taught, is, that of the Patron, or the Cow's Tail."

CHAPTER XVIII.

ASCOT RACES.

TO-DAY I visited Ascot. Race-courses are similar every where, and present the same objects; good horses, cruel riders, knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative degree when applied to Ascot. This is the general, and often the only impression that most men carry away with them.

Mr. Slick, who regards these things practically, called my attention to another view of it.

Squire," ," said he, "I'd a plaguy sight sooner see Ascot than anything else to England. There ain't nothin' like it. I don't mean the racin', because they can't go ahead like us, if they was to die for it. We have colts that can whip chain lightnin', on a pinch. Old Clay trotted with it once all round an orchard, and beat it his whole length, but it singed his tail properly as he passed it, you may depend. It ain't its runnin' I speak of, therefore, though that ain't mean nother; but it's got another featur', that you'll know it by from all others. Oh, it's an everlastin' pity you warn't here, when I was to England last time. Queen was there then; and where she is, of course all the world and its wife is too. She warn't there this year, and it sarves folks right. If I was an angelyferous queen, like her, I wouldn't go nowhere till I had a tory minister, and then a feller that had a trigger-eye" would stand a chance to get a white hemp-neckcloth. I don't wonder Hume don' like young England for when that boy grows

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up, he'll teach some folks that they had better let some folks alone, or some folks had better take care of some folks' ampersands that's all.

"The time I speak of, people went in their carriages, and not by railroad. Now, pr'aps you don't know, in fact you can't know, for you can't cypher, colonists ain't no good at figurs, but if you did know, the way to judge of a nation is by its private carriages. From Hyde Park corner to Ascot Heath, is twenty odd miles. Well, there was one whole endurin' stream of carriages all the way, sometimes havin' one or two eddies, and where the toll-gates stood, havin' still water for ever so far. Well, it flowed and flowed on for hours and hours without stoppin', like a river; and when you got up to the race-ground, there was the matter of two or three tiers of carriages, with the hosses off, packed as close as pins in a paper.

"It costs near hand to twelve hundred dollars a-year to keep up a carriage here. Now for goodness' sake jist multiply that everlastin' string of carriages by three hundred pounds each, and see what's spent in that way every year, and then multiply that by ten hundred thousand more that's in other places to England you don't see, and then tell me if rich people here ain't as thick as huckle-berries.

"Well, when you've done, go to France, to Belgium, and to Prussia, three sizeable places for Europe, and rake and scrape every private carriage they've got, and they ain't no touch to what Ascot can show. Well, when you've done your cipherin', come right back to London, as hard as you can clip from the race-course, and you won't miss any of 'em; the town is as full as ever, to your eyes. A knowin' old coon, bred and born to London, might see the difference, but you couldn't.

"Arter that's over, go and pitch the whole bilin' of 'em into the Thames, hosses, carriages, people, and all; and next day, if it warn't for the black weepers and long faces of them that's lost money by it, and the black crape and happy faces of them that's got money, or titles, or what not by it, you wouldn't know nothin' about it. Carriages wouldn't rise ten cents in the pound in the market. A stranger, like you, if you warn't told, wouldn't know nothin' was the matter above common. There ain't nothin' to England shows its wealth like this.