s though first used by the
Moabites. Others, again, were engaged at domino; and others still
busied in scoring the walls with their pen-knives, or whittling
shingles as they whistled for want of thought. These latter were
Yankees of course; but an air of idleness and indifference pervaded the
apartments, which almost begets a yawn in the remembrance.

When the good Vicar of Wakefield was sent to prison by the villany of
Thornhill, he expected on his entrance to find nothing but lamentations
and various sounds of misery; but it was very different. The prisoners
seemed all employed in one common design--that of forgetting thought in
merriment or clamor. My own disappointment was equally great on the
occasion I am relating--although there was less of clamor, probably,
than that encountered by the Vicar--owing, most likely, to the
lassitude incident to a fervid sun in July. But in all other respects,
the prison scene depicted by Goldsmith one hundred years ago, would
have answered very well for New-York in 1821--albeit we discerned not
among them the shrewd features of a Jenkinson, and heard nothing of the
cosmogony either of Sanchoniathon or Manetho.

Among them all, however, there was not a countenance that could be
recognized, and the writer began to flatter himself that he had been
called by mistake. It was not so. Turning to a strongly grated window
in another direction, whom should he see but his quondam friend Doctor
Wheelwright--as sound asleep as though in attendance upon a lecture on
the circulation of the blood, in the Medical College! On awaking him
from his slumber, he appeared neither surprised nor chagrined at the
interview. "The iron had not entered into _his_ soul," whatever might
have been the case with others--as may be inferred from the following
brief dialogue, in which my friend bore his part with all imaginable
_non-chalance_:--

"Ah, doctor, is this you?"

"How are you? Why shouldn't it be?"

"But pray how came you here?"

"Like most other honest people, for that matter--because I couldn't
help it. But it's all come of a mistake."

"Why, they have not mistaken you for another man, have they?"

"I can't say exactly that; but I made a mistake in going into the
lottery trade."

"Then you didn't draw the high prize, eh?"

"No: but I came plaguey nigh it though--three more of the figures would
have given me two of them."

"Indeed! you made the mistake in selecting the tickets, then? All you