ttle at
night, crouching in dread of the darkness, or of Leeds's devil,
aforesaid. In this respect he singularly resembles the Bohemian
charcoal-burner, who trembles at the thought of Ruebezahl, that malicious
goblin, who has an army of mountain-dwarfs and gnomes at his command. So
long as the sunlight inspires our Rat with confidence, however, he will
work at his coal-pit, while one comrade is away in the forest, snaring
game, and another has, perhaps, been dispatched to the precincts of
civilization with his wagon-load of coal. Yes! the Pine Rat sometimes
treads the streets of cities,--nay, even extends his wanderings to the
banks of the Delaware and the Hudson, to Philadelphia and Trenton,
to Jersey City and New York. Then, who so sharp as the grimy
tatterdemalion, who passes from street to street and from house to
house, with his swart and rickety wagon, and his jangling bell, the
discordant clangor of which, when we hear it, calls up horrible
recollections of the bells that froze our hearts in plague-stricken
cities of other lands, when doomed galley-slaves and _forcats_ wheeled
awful vehicles of putrefaction through the streets, clashing and
clinking their clamorous bells for more and still more corpses, and
foully jesting over the Death which they knew was already upon them! But
the long-drawn, monotonous, nasal cry of the charcoal-vender--who has
not heard it?--"Cha-r-coa'! Cha-r-coa'!"--is more cheerful than the
demoniac laughter of the desperate galley-slaves, and his bell sounds
musically when we hear it and think of theirs. Sometimes a couple of
these peregrinants may be seen to encounter each other in the streets,
and straightway there is an adjournment to the nearest bar-room, where
the most scientific method of "springing the arch" is discussed over a
glass of whiskey, at three cents the quart. Springing the arch, though
few may be able to interpret the phrase, is a trick by which every
housewife has suffered. It is the secret of piling the coal into the
measure in such a manner as to make the smaller quantity pass for the
larger, or, in other words, to make three pecks go for a bushel. So the
Pine Rat vindicates his claim to a common humanity with all the rest
of us men and women; for have not we all our secret and most approved
method of springing the arch,--of palming off our three short pecks for
a full and bounteous imperial bushel? Ah, yes! brothers and sisters,
whisper it, if you will, below your br