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oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon a-piece, and they can afford time to breath it in, with signs of calm enjoyHow they roll their great eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking vessel. An ox is your true toper.

ment.

But I perceive, my dear auditors that you are impatient for the remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty, if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you think of me, the better men and women will you find yourselves. I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing days; though, on that account alone, I might call myself the household god of a hundred families. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bells make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the Town Pump, and found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain my vital current on your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore which has found men sick, or left them so since the days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence on man

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kind. No; these are trifles compared with the merits. which wise men concede to me-if not in my simple self, yet as the representative of a class-of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water! The Town Pump and the Cow! Such is the glorious co-partnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brew-houses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider presses, and finally monopolise the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then disease, for lack of other victims shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then, sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now, the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled, in every generation, by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war-the drunkenness of nations—perhaps will cease. At least there will be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy-a calm bliss of temperate affections-shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close. To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their

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spirits were, and are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope.

Ahem dry work, this speechifying; especially to an unpracticed orator. I never conceived till now, how much toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir! My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor casks into one great pile, and make a bonfire in honor of the Town Pump. And when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain, richly sculptured, take my place upon the spot. Such monuments should be erected everywhere, and inscribed with the names of the distinguished champions of my cause. Now listen; for something very important is to

come next.

There are two or three honest friends of mine-and true friends I know they are-who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for temperance, and take up the honourable cause of the Town Pump, in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy bottle? Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no otherwise exemplified than by plunging, slap dash, into hot water, and woefully scalding yourself and other people? Trust me, they

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may. In the moral warfare which you are to wage—and indeed in the whole conduct of your lives-you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulent and manifold disquietudes of the world around me, to reach that deep calm well of purity, which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool earth's fever, or cleanse its stains. One o'clock! nay, then, if the dinner bell begins to speak, I may as well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, while drawing the water, as Rachael did of old. Hold out your vessel, my dear! There it is, full to the brim; so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher as you go; and forget not, in a glass of my own liquor, to drink—“ success to the Town Pump!"