wanted to buy a good dog, down to the _drove yard_, and he takes
Barney--stand up, Barney--see that, boys; how quick he minds! Great dog,
he is. Well, Ben. takes Barney, and down he goes to the _drove yard_. He
met the feller; the feller looked at the dog; he saw Barney _was_ a
dog--he looked at him, asked how old he was; if that was all the dog
Ben. owned, and he seemed to like the dog--but, boys, I'm gittin'
dry--_rotted dry_--"

"Go on, tell us all about the dog, then we'll drink," says the boys.

"'Well,' says Ben. McConachy to the feller, 'now, make us an offer for
him.' Now, what do you suppose, boys, that feller's first offer was?"

The boys couldn't guess it; they guessed and guessed; some one price,
some another, all the way from five to fifty dollars--the old fellow
continuing to say "No," until they gave it up.

"Well, boys, I'll tell you--that feller, after looking and looking at
Ben. McConachy's dog, tail to snout, half an hour--_didn't offer a red
cent for him!_ Ben. come home in disgust and give the dog to me--there
he is. Now, boys, we'll have that sperrets."

But on looking around, the boys had cut the pit--_mizzled!_

The Perils of Wealth

Money is admitted to be--there is no earthly use of dodging the
fact--the lever of the whole world, by which it and its multifarious
cargo of men and matters, mountains and mole hills, wit, wisdom, weal,
woe, warfare and women, are kept in motion, in season and out of season.
It is the arbiter of our fates, our health, happiness, life and death.
Where it makes one man a happy _Christian_, it makes ten thousand
miserable _devils_. It is no use to argufy the matter, for money is the
"root of all evil," more or less, and--as Patricus Hibernicus is
supposed to have said of a single feather he reposed on--if a dollar
gives some men so much uneasiness, what must a million do? Money has
formed the basis of many a long and short story, and we only wish that
they were all imbued, as our present story is, with--more irresistible
mirth than misery. Lend us your ears.

Not long ago, one of our present well-known--or ought to be, for he is a
man of parts--business men of Boston, resided and carried on a small
"trade and dicker" in the city of Portland. By frugal care and small
profits, he had managed to save up some six hundred dollars, all in
_halves_, finding himself in possession of this vast sum of hard cash,
he began to conceive a rather insignificant notion