our
history is also dead. It would seem that it was not intended they should
be long asunder. But their time was come, and they might almost be said
to have departed in company. The same is true of Friends Robert and
Martha, who have also filled their time, and gone hence, it is to be
hoped to a better world. Some few of the younger persons of our drama
still exist, but it has been remarked of them, that they avoid
conversing of the events of their younger days. Youth is the season of
hope, and hope disappointed has little to induce us to dwell on its
deceptive pictures.

If those who now live in this republic, can see any grounds for a timely
warning in the events here recorded, it may happen that the mercy of a
divine Creator may still preserve that which he has hitherto cherished
and protected.

It remains only to say that we have endeavoured to imitate the
simplicity of Captain Woolston's journal, in writing this book, and
should any homeliness of style be discovered, we trust it will be
imputed to that circumstance.

The Crater.

Chapter I.

"'Twas a commodity lay fretting by you;
'Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas."

_Taming of the Shrew._

There is nothing in which American Liberty, not always as much
restrained as it might be, has manifested a more decided tendency to run
riot, than in the use of names. As for Christian names, the Heathen
Mythology, the Bible, Ancient History, and all the classics, have long
since been exhausted, and the organ of invention has been at work with
an exuberance of imagination that is really wonderful for such a
matter-of-fact people. Whence all the strange sounds have been derived
which have thus been pressed into the service of this human
nomenclature, it would puzzle the most ingenious philologist to say. The
days of the Kates, and Dollys, and Pattys, and Bettys, have passed away,
and in their stead we hear of Lowinys, and Orchistrys, Philenys,
Alminys, Cytherys, Sarahlettys, Amindys, Marindys, &c. &c. &c. All these
last appellations terminate properly with an a, but this unfortunate
vowel, when a final letter, being popularly pronounced like y, we have
adapted our spelling to the sound, which produces a complete bathos to
all these flights in taste.

The hero of this narrative was born fully sixty years since, and happily
before the rage for modern appellations, though he just escaped being
named after another system which we c