rst, and then up through Vermont,
and maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."

I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
way.

The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should
pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of
these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.

"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."

This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
no title to be included in it.

Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the
four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
what enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people of
the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As
he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was
fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing
some of the mental and moral characteristics--the lighter and more
comic ones--of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be
reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen
relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of
petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the
consciousness--so insupportable to some minds--that his whole life was
a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the
public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent
triumphs--as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out
of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a
part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some
ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who
was richer than himself, or when--though he would not always be so
decidedly diabolical--his pretended wants should make him a sharer in
the scanty living of real in