ow,--so that we
should not submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled
aggressor that came along. You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I
suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer's invention.
See whether this sounds true or not.

Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and
Serab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking
of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet
breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in English
stables, when he rubbed down the silken-skinned racers, in great
perfection. After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and some
of the companies were on the village-common, there was still some
skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken out
of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out somebody.
So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and, in brief,
emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate any
classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate for
his attentions. I don't suppose there were many of the college boys that
would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know so much
more of than Americans, for the most part. However, one of the
Sophomores, a very quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the
crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he stood there, sparring
away, struck him with the sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had
been with his fist, and knocked him heels over head and senseless, so
that he had to be carried off from the field. This ugly way of hitting
is the great trick of the French gavate, which is not commonly thought
able to stand its ground against English pugilistic science. These are
old recollections, with not much to recommend them, except, perhaps, a
dash of life, which may be worth a little something.

The young Marylander brought them all up, you may remember. He recalled
to my mind those two splendid pieces of vitality I told you of. Both
have been long dead. How often we see these great red-flaring flambeaux
of life blown out, as it were, by a puff of wind,--and the little,
single-wicked night-lamp of being, which some white-faced and attenuated
invalid shades with trembling fingers, flickering on while they go out
one after another, until its glimmer is all that is left to us of the
generation t