o my plan--influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy
of authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the _viva-voce_
practice would become general among novelists, to the infinite
detriment of the book trade.

Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.

"'Mirth,'" cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L'Allegro,
"'to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy crew!'"

"Let us indulge the poor youth," said Mirth, with a kindness which
made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to
misinterpret her motives. "I have espied much promise in him. True, a
shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to
follow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merry
one is twin-born with it. We will take him with us, and you shall see
that he will set us all a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting at
Stamford." Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest and gained me
admittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without a
community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid
and avert all the harm that might be in our power.

This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe
of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. The
old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of
the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book;
tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the
spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more
facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. The
young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master's hand, and
gave an inspiring echo to the showman's melody. The bookish man and
the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the former
enacting the double shuffle in a style which everybody must have
witnessed ere election week was blotted out of time, while the girl,
setting her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed
such light rapidity of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motion
that I could not conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at the
moment that Nature had made her, as the old showman had made his
puppets, for no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed
forth a succession of most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting us
till we interpreted them as the war-song with which, in imitation of
his ancestors, he was