their
muskets with his powder, and fired them off in celebration of the event,
they indeed revered the stranger as a superior and marvelous being. For
nearly eighteen months the German remained on the coast. It was a port
rarely visited, and the negroes would not allow him to make any attempt to
travel to a more frequented place. Thus he continued to make gunpowder for
his barbarous friends, and to live, according to their notions, "like a
prince;" for to do King Bocca-Bocca justice, when he learned our friend's
value, he treated him like a man and a brother. What might have been his
fate had he awaited in idle despondency the arrival of a vessel? As it
was, the negroes crowded the beach, and fired off repeated salvos at his
departure. Doubtless his name will descend through many a dusky generation
as the teacher of that art which they still practice, carrying on a
lucrative commerce in gunpowder with the neighboring tribes. A small
square chest of gold-dust, which the escaped victim of Jesuit fraud
brought back to Europe, was no inappropriate proof of the policy of doing
something "in the mean time," while waiting, however anxiously, to do
something else.

We knew another case in point, also connected with the late king of the
French. M. de G---- was, on the downfall of that monarch, in possession of a
very handsome pension for past services. The revolution came, and his
pension was suspended. His wife was a woman of energy: she saw that the
pension might be recovered by making proper representations in the right
quarters; but she, also, saw that ruinous embarrassment and debt might
accrue in the interim. Her house was handsomely furnished--she had been
brought up in the lap of wealth and luxury. She did not hesitate; she
turned her house into a lodging-house, sank the pride of rank, attended to
all the duties of such a station, and--what was the result? When, at the
end of three years, M. de G---- recovered his pension, he owed nobody a
farthing, and the arrears sufficed to dower one of his daughters about to
marry a gentleman of large fortune, who had become acquainted with her by
lodging in their house. Madame de G----'s fashionable friends thought her
conduct very shocking. But what might have become of the family in three
years of petitioning?

Again: one of our most intimate acquaintance was an English gentleman,
who, having left the army at the instance of a rich father-in-law, had the
misfortune subsequently t