a dry goods shop, if they have got to see the elephant
that he _observed--in Boston_.

Presence of Mind.

Mr. Davenport--the "Ned Davenport" of the Bowery boys--before sailing
for Europe and while attached to the Bowery Theatre, was of the lean and
hungry kind. In fact he was extremely lean--tall as a may-pole, and
slender enough to crawl through a greased _fleute_,--to use a yankeeism.

Somebody "up" for Shylock one night, at the Bowery, was suddenly
"indisposed" or, in the strongest probability, quite stupefied from the
effect of the deadly poisons retailed in the numerous groggeries that
really swarm near the Gotham play-houses. Well, Mr. Davenport--a
gentleman who has reached a most honorable position in his profession by
sobriety and talent--was substituted for the indisposed _Shylock_, and
the play went on.

In the trial scene, Mr. Davenport really "took down the house" by his
vehemence, and his ferocious, lean, and hungry aspirations for the pound
of flesh! One of the b'hoys, so identical with the B'ow'ry pit, got
quite worked up; he twisted and squirmed, he chewed his cud, he stroked
his "soap-lock," but, finally, wrought up to great presence of
mind,--our lean Shylock still calling for his pound of flesh,--roars
out;--

"S'ay, look a' here,--_why don't you give skinny de meat, don't you see
he wants it, sa-a-a-y!_"

We very naturally infer that "the piece" _went off with a rush!_

The Skipper's Schooner.

No better specimen of the genus, genuine Yankee nation, can be found,
imagined or described, than the skippers of along shore, from
Connecticut river to Eastport, Maine. These critters give full scope to
the Hills and Hacketts of the stage, and the Sam Slicks and
Falconbridges of the press, to embody and sketch out in the broadest
possible dialect of Yankee land. One of these "tarnal critters," it is
my purpose to draw on for my brief sketch, and I wish my readers to do
me the credit to believe that for little or no portion of my yarn or
language am I indebted to fertility of imagination, as the incidents are
real, and quite graphic enough to give piquancy to the subject.

Last spring, just after the breaking up of winter, a down-east smack or
schooner, freighted with cod-fish and potatoes, I believe, rounded off
Cape Ann light, and owing to head winds, or some other perversity of a
nautical nature, could no further go; so the skipper and his crew--one
man, green as catnip--made for