billows, and from the sure haven into which he had been blown he
could gaze with complacent resignation, if not with happiness, at the
dangers through which he had passed. I am sure that we were all
delighted at the brightening appearance of our guest, and felt that, if
the story he was to tell us was one which included disasters, it would
at least be lightened by traces of humor and the calm acceptance of a
philosophic mind.

"I was born in the State of Connecticut," so our guest began his
narration. "I came from a venturesome stock, and the instinct of
commercial enterprise may be regarded as hereditary in my family. My
grandfather was the first one to discover the tropical attributes of the
beech-wood tree. He first perceived that it contained within its fibres
the pungency of the nutmeg. With a celerity which we remember with pride
in our family, he availed himself of the commercial value of his
discovery, and for years did a prosperous trade on the credulity of
mankind. He was a man of humor,--a sense which has been to some extent
transmitted to myself,--he was a man of humor, and I have no doubt he
enjoyed the joke he was practising on people, fully as much as the
profits which the practical embodiment of his humor brought to his
pocket. My father was a deacon, a man of true piety and eminently
respectable. He was engaged in the retail-grocery business,--a business
which offers opportunities to a person of wit and of an inventive turn
of mind. The butter that he sold was salted invariably by one rule--a
rule which he discovered and applied in the cellar of the store himself;
and the sugar which he sold, if it was sanded, was always sanded by a
method which improved rather than detracted from its appearance."

Here our guest paused a moment, as if enjoying the recollections of the
virtues of his ancestors. His face was as sober as ever, but his look
was one of contentment; and I could but note the suggestion of
merriment--the merriment of a happy memory--in his eye. How happy it is
for an offspring to be able to recall the character of his forefathers
with such liveliness of mind!

"The motive which impelled me towards Texas," he resumed, "was one which
was natural for me to feel, thus ancestrally connected. I had heired my
father's business,--the deacon, who had died full of honors, ripe in
years, and in perfect peace. But the business did not prosper in my
hands; perhaps, I had not heired, with the business, th