parliament of these free spirits;
unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre,
they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared the
representatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deer
during thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.
Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanished
around his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot
of its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind of
their savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to the
routine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of old
over the forest-leaves,--here was the Indian still.

"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, "here is
an honest company of us--one, two, three, four, five, six--all going
to the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like
to know where this young gentleman may be going?"

I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind that
preferred its own folly to another's wisdom, the open spirit that
found companions everywhere--above all, the restless impulse that had
so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,--these were my
claims to be of their society.

"My friends," cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, "I am
going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford."

"But in what capacity?" asked the old showman, after a moment's
silence. "All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.
Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it,
are a mere strolling gentleman."

I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a
propensity to their way of life she had not left me altogether
destitute of qualifications for it, though I could not deny that my
talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the
meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the
story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become an
itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such
audiences as I could collect.

"Either this," said I, "is my vocation, or I have been born in vain."

The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take
me as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of
which undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventive
talent I might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in
opposition t