y life is of less
consequence than yours, since it is farther spent; but it still has
sweetness, and it is the _only_ life that I possess. Here are three
goblets of wine--one is Scuppernong, the other two are harmless. I will
apportion our chances fairly, and will drink two; you shall drink one.
The lawyers are at hand to arrange the inquest, and to confer the
title-deeds to the estate.' In silence the son consented, and the
devoted pair drank off the goblets as proposed, and at once sat down to
a banquet prepared for them, and for the legal gentlemen attendant. When
the ices came in, the elder Roseton was carried out; and the heir of
Pont-Noir, having seen the remains properly bestowed in a place of
safety, and a special inquest held, finished the night with the
counsellors in the enjoyment of a tempered hilarity, and rose next
morning the possessor of wealth so boundless, so unspeakable, that my
brain reels as I endeavor to grasp at even its outlying fragments.

In the hope of presenting some of its details to the reader, I procured,
at an enormous expense, a Babbage calculating engine, and during three
successive weeks worked it without pause upon the illimitable figures.
It then became clogged, and the village Vulcan, whose impartial hand
corrects at once the time-pieces and the plowshares of the neighborhood,
having knocked the machinery to pieces with a sledge, declared himself
incompetent to explain and unable to repair. My results therefore are
maimed and imperfect, but I trust they will show that I have not
exaggerated the difficulty of the process of reduction and estimation.

The fragmentary portions of the estate, then, are: the entire capital
stock of thirty-eight of the Banks of New York city (though here a wise
policy has suggested the employment of various respectable names as
those of shareholders, in order to protect these institutions from the
fury of a mob); all that portion of the metropolis lying between the
Twelfth and Twenty-second Avenues, from Canal Street to the suburb of
Poughkeepsie, comprising of necessity the water rights and quarries;
eighteen thousand millions of bullion specially deposited in the State
Bank of Mississippi, to the order of the six New England Governors,
trustees; the Pont-Noir mansion on Nultiel Street, surrounded by
twenty-five acres of land, the very heart of the best New York
residences, and variously estimated from six to eight millions of
dollars; the remote but to