l them both out.

Nevertheless, I am not the husband of my great, great, grandmother; and
this is a reflection which affords me infinite relief,--but I am the
husband of Madame Lalande--of Madame Stephanie Lalande--with whom my
good old relative, besides making me her sole heir when she dies--if
she ever does--has been at the trouble of concocting me a match. In
conclusion: I am done forever with billets doux and am never to be met
without SPECTACLES.

KING PEST.

A Tale Containing an Allegory.

The gods do bear and will allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.

_Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex._

ABOUT twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, and during the
chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew
of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the
Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find
themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St.
Andrews, London--which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a
"Jolly Tar."

The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and in
every other respect agreeing with the general character of such places
at the period--was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups
scattered here and there within it, sufficiently well adapted to its
purpose.

Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting, if
not the most conspicuous.

The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed
by the characteristic appellation of "Legs," was at the same time much
the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet and a half, and
an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary
consequence of an altitude so enormous.--Superfluities in height were,
however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects.
He was exceedingly thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have
answered, when drunk, for a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober,
have served for a jib-boom. But these jests, and others of a similar
nature, had evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the
cachinnatory muscles of the tar. With high cheek-bones, a large
hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white
eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a species
of dogged indifference to matters and things in general, w