for one so
unlike any thing of the kind, he went it with a _perfect looseness_.

A rich citizen's house was robbed--burglariously entered and robbed; and
Peter Houp, the staid, plain Philadelphia carpenter, who would not have
bartered his reputation for all the ingots of the Incas, while in his
sober senses, was arrested as one of the burglars, and the imputation,
false or true, caused him to spend seven years in a penitentiary. O,
what an awful probation of sorrow and mental agony were those seven long
years! But they passed over, and Peter Houp was again free, not a worse
man, fortunately, but a much wiser one! He had not seen or heard a word
of those so long dearly cherished, and cruelly deserted--his family--for
eight years, and his heart yearned towards them so strongly that,
pennyless, pale and care-worn as he was, he would have started
immediately for home, but being a good carpenter, and wages high, he
concluded to go to work, while he patiently awaited a reply of his
abandoned family to his long and penitent written letter. Weeks, months,
and a year passed, and no reply came, though another letter was
dispatched, for fear of the miscarriage of the first; (and both letters
did miscarry, as the wife never received them.) Peter gave himself up as
a lost man, his family lost or scattered, and nothing but death could
end his detailed wretchedness. But still, as fortune would have it, he
never again sought refuge from his sorrows in the poisoned chalice, the
rum glass; not he. Peter toiled, saved his money, and at the end of four
years found himself in the possession of a snug little sum of hard
cash, and a fully established good name. But all of this time he had
heard not a syllable of his home; and all of a sudden, one fine day in
early spring, he took passage in a ship, arrived in Philadelphia; and in
a few rods from the wharf, upon which he landed, he met an old neighbor.
The astonishment of the latter seemed wondrous; he burst out--

"My God! is this Peter Houp, come from his grave?"

"No," said Peter, in his slow, dry way, "I'm from New Orleans."

Peter soon learned that his wife and children yet lived in the same
place, and long mourned him as forever gone. Peter Houp felt any thing
but merry, but he was determined to have his joke and a merry meeting.
In an hour or two Peter Houp, the long lost wanderer, stood in his own
door.

"Well, Nancy, _here is thy leg of mutton!_" and a fine one too he had.

The