d clocks, and tin-ware
and garden seeds; everything, indeed, without regard to fitness of
association, which it was possible to sell in the region to which he was
going.

Ralph heard him through his list with tolerable patience; but when the
pedler, having given it a first reading, proposed a second, with passing
comments on the prospects of sale of each separate article, by way of
recapitulation, the youth could stand it no longer. Apologizing to the
tradesman, therefore in good set terms, he hurried away to the
completion of those preparations called for by his approaching
departure. Bunce, having no auditor, was compelled to do the same;
accordingly a few hours after, the entire party made its appearance in
the court of the village-inn, where the carriages stood in waiting.

About this time another party left the village, though in a different
direction. It consisted of old Allen, his wife, and daughter Kate. In
their company rode the lawyer Pippin, who, hopeless of elevation in his
present whereabouts, was solicitous of a fairer field for the exhibition
of his powers of law and logic than that which he now left had ever
afforded him. He made but a small item in the caravan. His goods and
chattels required little compression for the purposes of carriage, and a
small _Jersey_--a light wagon in free use in that section, contained all
his wardrobe, books, papers, &c.--the heirlooms of a long and carefully
economized practice. We may not follow his fortunes after his removal to
the valley of the Mississippi. It does not belong to the narrative; but,
we may surely say to those in whom his appearance may have provoked some
interest, that subsequently he got into fine practice--was notorious for
his stump-speeches; and a random sheet of the "Republican Star and
Banner of Independence" which we now have before us, published in the
town of "Modern Ilium," under the head of the "Triumph of Liberty and
Principle," records, in the most glowing language, the elevation of
Peter Pippin, Esq., to the state legislature, by seven votes majority
over Colonel Hannibal Hopkins, the military candidate--Pippin 39,
Hopkins 32. Such a fortunate result, if we have rightly estimated the
character of the man, will have easily salved over all the hurts which,
in his earlier history, his self-love may have suffered.

But the hour of departure was at hand, and assisting the fair Edith into
the carriage, Ralph had the satisfaction of placing her