A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP—II.

1. Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of 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 or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in with sighs of calm enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessel. An ox is your true toper.

2. 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. 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.

3. 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 in your behalf.

4. No; these are trifles compared with the merits which wise men concede to me-if not in my single 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 copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brew-houses, uproot the vineyards, shelter the ciderpresses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, 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.

5. 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. 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

The

of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were, and are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope.

6. Dry work, this speechifying; especially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived, till now, what 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 through my instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor-casks into one great pile, and make a bonfire in honour 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.

Hawthorne.

team'-ster, one who drives two or com-bus'-ti-ble, that burns easily.

dis-til-ler-ies, places where strong re-luc'-tant-ly, unwillingly.

drink is made.

mon-op'-ol-ise, take up the whole; tur'-moil, disturbance, disquiet.

pro-tract'-ed, long drawn out.

de-lir'-i-um, wandering in mind.

re-gen'-er-at-ed, made good.

in-stru-men-tal'-i-ty, help.

gone before.

sculp'-tured, carved.

entirely occupy.

con-sum-ma'-tion, end arrived at.

squal'-id, filthy.

parents to children.

her-ed'-i-tar-y, descending from pre-de-ces'-sors, those who have

trans-mit'-ted, handed down.

EXERCISES.-1. Make nouns from the following verbs: Enjoy, represent, distil, lecture, precede, inscribe, erect, revere, persevere.

2. Name the verbs from which the following nouns are formed: Adherent, successor, procession, reduction, confusion, subscription, ascent, composition, judgment.

3. Name the adjectives from which the following verbs are formed: Fertilise, amplify, publish, enable, purify, clarify, illustrate.

4. Make sentences of your own, and use in each sentence one or more of the following words: Interrupt, predecessor, impute, replenish.

THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA.

[Surajah Dowlah was the Nabob or native ruler of Bengal. In 1756, when the event narrated in this lesson occurred, the English had very little power in India; in Bengal they had only a small trading settlement at Calcutta. This extract is taken from the Essay on Clive, by Lord Macaulay, the brilliant historian and essayist.]

1. From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other quarter.

2 Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without a special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these, Surajah Dowlah marched with a great army against Fort William.

3. The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that he could not do better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors.

4. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. He abused the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest.

5. Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for