will be an auction this
evening at early candle-light, at Brown & Robinson's store! Dry goods,
boots and shoes, hats and caps, hardware, queen's ware, and so forth,
and so forth. Richard Roe, Auctioneer! Come one, come all, come
everybody!" Then the crier rang his bell, and went on to the next
corner, where he repeated his proclamation. After a while, the constable
got a deputy to whom he made over his business of town-crier. This
deputy was no other than that reckless boy who used to run out from the
printing-office and shoot the turtle-doves; and he decorated his
proclamation with quips and quirks of his own invention, and with
personal allusions to his employer, who was auctioneer as well as
constable. But though he was hail-fellow with every boy in town, and
although every boy rejoiced in his impudence, he was so panoplied in the
awfulness of his relation to the constabulary functions that, however
remote it was, no boy would have thought of trifling with him when he
was on duty. If ever a boy holloed something at him when he was out with
his crier's bell, he turned and ran as hard as he could, and as if from
the constable himself.

The boys knew just one other official, and that was the gauger, whom
they watched at a respectful distance, when they found him employed with
his mysterious instruments gauging the whiskey in the long rows of
barrels on the Basin bank. They did not know what the process was, and I
own that I do not know to this day what it was. My boy watched him with
the rest, and once he ventured upon a bold and reckless act. He had so
long heard that it was whiskey which made people drunk that at last the
notion came to have an irresistible fascination for him, and he
determined to risk everything, even life itself, to know what whiskey
was like. As soon as the gauger had left them, he ran up to one of the
barrels where he had seen a few drops fall from his instrument when he
lifted it from the bunghole, and plunged the tip of his little finger
into the whiskey, and then put it to his tongue. He expected to become
drunk instantly, if not to end a town-drunkard there on the spot; but
the whiskey only tasted very disgusting; and he was able to get home
without help. Still, I would not advise any other boy to run the risk he
took in this desperate experiment.

There was a time not long after that when he really did get drunk, but
it was not with whiskey. One morning after a rain, when the boys were
hav