ags? What
that Ericus, king of Sweden, who is said to have kept the winds in his
cap? What, in more recent times, those Lapland Nornas who traded in
favourable breezes? All which will appear the more clearly when we
consider, that, even to this day, _raising the wind_ is proverbial for
raising money, and that brokers and banks were invented by the Venetians
at a later period.

And now for the improvement of this digression. I find a parallel to Mr.
Sawin's fortune in an adventure of my own. For, shortly after I had
first broached to myself the before-stated natural-historical and
archaeological theories, as I was passing, _haec negotia penitus mecum
revolvens_, through one of the obscure suburbs of our New England
metropolis, my eye was attracted by these words upon a sign-board,--CHEAP
CASH-STORE. Here was at once the confirmation of my speculations, and
the substance of my hopes. Here lingered the fragment of a happier past,
or stretched out the first tremulous organic filament of a more
fortunate future. Thus glowed the distant Mexico to the eyes of Sawin,
as he looked through the dirty pane of the recruiting-office window, or
speculated from the summit of that mirage-Pisgah which the imps of the
bottle are so cunning in raising up. Already had my Alnaschar-fancy
(even during that first half-believing glance) expended in various
useful directions the funds to be obtained by pledging the manuscript of
a proposed volume of discourses. Already did a clock ornament the tower
of the Jaalam meeting-house--a gift appropriately, but modestly,
commemorated in the parish and town records, both, for now many years,
kept by myself. Already had my son Seneca completed his course at the
University. Whether, for the moment, we may not be considered as
actually lording it over those Baratarias with the viceroyalty of which
Hope invests us, and whether we are ever so warmly housed as in our
Spanish castles, would afford matter of argument. Enough that I found
that sign-board to be no other than a bait to the trap of a decayed
grocer. Nevertheless, I bought a pound of dates (getting short weight by
reason of immense flights of harpy flies, who pursued and lighted upon
their prey even in the very scales), which purchase I made, not only
with an eye to the little ones at home, but also as a figurative reproof
of that too-frequent habit of my mind, which, forgetting the due order
of chronology, will often persuade me that the happy scept