ter entrust it to the boy's
keeping, to have it ready in case of such an emergency."

Nick felt in his pockets, and with a puzzled air remarked:

"I haven't got the money here, but I'll give you a check on the Nassau
Bank for a thousand, and you can give me the change; or I'll give you a
deed of Stewart's, or a mortgage lien on the Astor House."

"Shan't do it, shan't do it, Old Nick; and I'm afraid you'll have to go
to Blackwell's Island, sure."

"There's that infernal island again," said Nick; "if I'd ever thought it
would come to this, I never'd have given that little piece of property
to the city; but I'll buy it back next week, and use it hereafter for a
cabbage garden; see if I don't."

By this time the Elephants seemed to disposed to go, but Nick spied on
the shirt-front of Mr. John Spout a diamond pin, which seemed to take
his fancy. He offered in vain a block of stores in Pearl street, the
Custom-House, the Assay-Office, the Metropolitan Hotel and
three-quarters of the steamer Atlantic, and to throw into the bargain
Staten Island and Brooklyn City; but it was no use, the party took their
leave, and Nick was disconsolate.

Passing up Broadway, their attention was attracted by one of those
full-length basswood statues of impossible-looking men, holding an
impracticable pistol in his hand, at an angle which never could be
achieved by a live man with the usual allowance of bones, but which
defiant figure was evidently intended to be suggestive of a
shooting-gallery in the rear.

[Illustration]

Mr. John Spout, who was in a philosophic mood, remarked that it was a
curious study to observe the various abortive efforts of aspiring
carpenters to represent the human form divine, in the three-cornered
wooden men, which stand for "pistol-galleries;" and the inexplicable
Turks, the unheard of Scotchmen, and the Indians of every possible and
impossible tribe, which are supposed to hint "tobacco and cigars."

The ambitious carpenter first hews out a distorted caricature of a man,
which he passes over to the painters to be embellished. By the time the
figure has survived the last operation, it might certainly be
worshipped without transgressing any scriptural injunction, for it
certainly looks like nothing in "the heavens above, the earth below, or
the waters under the earth." It is, however, an easy matter to
distinguish the Highlanders from the Turks, by the fact, that the calves
of their legs are larger around t