on a distance of at least two miles, and took our station near
some lime-kilns, close to the sea. When she was sufficiently near,
one of the seconds stepped forward and gave the signal by dropping
a blood-stained handkerchief, prepared for the occasion. Bang!
bang! went the pistols; when she gracefully sank into the arms of
HARLEY, who held her in a fine melo-dramatic attitude. The report
was soon over all the town, and of course in the newspapers. My
adversary put his arm in a sling, and whenever I happened to be
near her, in a perfect state of despair I vowed that I could never
forgive myself for having shot my friend. We mutually repulsed her
by severe looks whenever she approached us; and she soon left the
Worthing Theatre to seek for victims of less sensibility in other
places.'

We once more take our leave of Mr. ABBOTT'S agreeable manuscript volume;
by no means certain, however, that its entertaining pages may not again
tempt us to share with our readers the enjoyment they have afforded us.

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.--Will the author of '_Public
Concert-Singing_' favor us with his address? We are desirous of
communicating with him, although he does _not_ 'find his hastily-jotted
thoughts in the pages of the KNICKERBOCKER,' for reasons which perhaps he
can partly divine from the present number, and which we could impart more
directly in a private note. We agree with him entirely in his views; and
if he will permit us, we will here quote a passage from an article which
we penned upon a subject collateral to his general theme, many years ago,
before we were hampered with the professional '_we_,' and could write out
of our 'company dress.' It is a little sketch of the first public singing,
save that of the church, to which we had ever listened: 'How well do I
remember it! It was at the theatre of a country village; a rough,
barn-like edifice, at which several Stentor-lunged Thespians 'from the
New-York and Philadelphia Theatres' split the ears of the groundlings, and
murdered SHAKSPEARE'S heroes and the King's English. I had been watching
with boyish curiosity the play which had just concluded: the mottled,
patched, yellowish-green curtain had descended upon the personages whose
sorrows were my own; and I was gazing vacantly at the long row of tallow
candles placed in holes bored for the purpose in the stage, and at the two
fiddlers who composed 'the orc