site of the much-boasted commercial
prosperity of the port.

The afternoon was like a morning in spring, the breeze which occasionally
rippled the basin possessing that peculiarly bland influence which is so
often felt in the American autumn; and the worthy mechanic laboured at his
calling, seated on his shop board, at an open window, far better satisfied
with himself than many of those whose fortune it is to be placed in state,
beneath canopies of velvet and gold. On the outer side of the little
building, a tall, awkward, but vigorous and well-formed countryman was
lounging, with one shoulder placed against the side of the shop, as if his
legs found the task of supporting his heavy frame too grievous to be
endured with out assistance, seemingly in waiting for the completion of
the garment at which the other toiled, and with which he intended to adorn
the graces of his person, in an adjoining parish, on the succeeding
sabbath.

In order to render the minutes shorter, and, possibly in indulgence to a
powerful propensity to talk, of which he who wielded the needle was
somewhat the subject, but few of the passing moments were suffered to
escape without a word from one or the other of the parties. As the subject
of their discourse had a direct reference to the principal matter of our
tale, we shall take leave to give such portions of it to the reader as we
deem most relevant to a clear exposition of that which is to follow. The
latter will always bear in mind, that he who worked was a man drawing into
the wane of life; that he bore about him the appearance of one who, either
from incompetency or from some fatality of fortune, had been doomed to
struggle through the world, keeping poverty from his residence only by the
aid of great industry and rigid frugality; and that the idler was a youth
of an age and condition that the acquisition of an entire set of
habiliments formed to him a sort of era in his adventures.

"Yes." exclaimed the indefatigable shaper of cloth, with a species of
sigh which might have been equally construed into an evidence of the
fulness of his mental enjoyment, or of the excess of his bodily labours;
"yes, smarter sayings have seldom fallen from the lips of man, than such
as the squire pour'd out this very day. When he spoke of the plains of
father Abraham, and of the smoke and thunder of the battle, Pardon, it
stirred up such stomachy feelings in my bosom, that I verily believe I
could have had the h