There is no season of the year in which the lady may not, if she pleases, claim her privilege; but the latter end of May is generally fixed upon for the purpose. The attentive husband may judge, by certain prognostics, when the storm is nigh at hand. If the lady grows uncommonly fretful, finds fault with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much of the nastiness of every thing about her; these are symptoms which ought not to be neglected, yet they sometimes go off without any further effect. But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheelbarrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets filled with a solution of lime in water, there is no time for hesitation. He immediately locks up the apartment or closet where his papers and private property are kept, and, putting the key in his pocket, betakes himself to flight. A husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during this season of female rage. His authority is superseded, his commission suspended, and the very scullion who cleans the brasses in the kitchen becomes of more importance than he. He has nothing for it but to abdicate for a time, and run from an evil which he can neither prevent nor mollify.

The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are stripped of their furniture; paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie in huddled heaps about the floors; the curtains are torn from their testers, the beds crammed into windows; chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles crowd the yard; and the garden-fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, under-petticoats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass for the foreground of the picture; gridirons and frying-pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, joint-stools, and the fractured remains of rushbottomed chairs. There, a closet has disgorged its bowels,riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters; from the rag-hole in the garret to the rathole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom was come, and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment.

This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings with brushes, dipped in a solution of lime, called WHITE-WASH; to pour buckets of water over every floor, and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with hard brushes, charged with soft soap and stone-cutter's sand.

The windows by no means escape the general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the pent-house, at the risk of her neck,

and, with a mug in her hand and a bucket within reach, dashes innumerable gallons of water against the glass panes, to the great annoyance of passengers in the street.

I have been told that an action at law was once brought against one of these water-nymphs by a person who had a new suit of clothes spoiled by this operation: but, after long argument, it was determined that no damages could be awarded, inasmuch as the defendant was in the exercise of a legal right, and not answerable for the consequences. And so the poor gentleman was doubly non-suited; for he lost both his suit of clothes and his suit at law.

I know a gentleman here who is fond of accounting for every thing in a philosophical way. He considers this, which I call a custom, as a real, periodical disease, peculiar to the climate. His train of reasoning is whimsical and ingenious; but I am not at leisure to give you the detail. The result was, that he found the distemper to be incurable; but, after much study, he thought he had discovered a method to divert the evil he could not subdue. For this purpose, he caused a small building, about twelve feet square, to be erected in his garden, and furnished with some ordinary chairs and tables, and a few prints of the cheapest sort. His hope was that, when the white-washing frenzy seized the females of his family, they might repair to this apartment, and scrub, and scour, and smear to their hearts' content, and so spend the violence of the disease in this outpost, whilst he enjoyed himself in quiet at head-quarters. But the experiment did not answer his expectation. It was impossible it should, since a principal part of the gratification consists in the lady's having an uncontrolled right to torment her husband, at least once in every year; to turn him out of doors, and take the reins of government into her own hands.

MISTAKE VERSUS BLUNDER.'

This was an action on the statute of Patrick 4, chap. 16, called THE STATUTE OF NAILS, which prohibits all subjects within the realm from cutting or paring their nails on a Friday, under the penalty of twenty shillings for every offence, to be recovered by the overseers of the poor, for the use of the poor of the county in which the offence should be committed. Mistake and others were overseers of the poor for the county of Antrim, and brought their action under the statute against the defendant. And it was in proof that the defendant had pared his thumb-nails and his great toe-nails on Friday, to wit, on Friday, the day of

at twelve o'clock in the night of the same day.

This is a case cited in the most humorous paper, entitled "Specimen of a Modern Lawsuit."

And

Counsel for the defendant demurred to the facts, observing that, as this was a penal law, it ought to be strictly construed. thereupon took three points of defence, viz.: First, it was urged that night is not day, and the statute expressly says Fri-day, and not Fri-night; and the proof is that the cutting was at night. Secondly, it was contended that twelve o'clock on Friday night is, in fact, the beginning of Saturday morning, and therefore not within the statute. And, thirdly, that the words of the statute are UNGUES DIGITORUM-Anglicè—the nails of the FINGERS, and the testimony only respects thumbs and great toes.

The jury gave in a special verdict; whereupon, after long advisement, the judges were unanimously of opinion, on the first point, that, in construction of law, day is night and night is day; because a day consists of twenty-four hours, and the law will not allow of fractions of a day; de minimis non curat lex; in English, the law don't stand upon trifles. On the second point, that twelve o'clock at night, being the precise line of division between Friday night and Saturday morning, is a portion or point of time which may be considered as belonging to both, or to either, or to neither, at the discretion of the court. And, thirdly, that, in construction of law, fingers are thumbs and thumbs are fingers, and thumbs and fingers are great toes and little toes, and great toes and little toes are thumbs and fingers; and so judgment for the plaintiff.

THE BATTLE OF THE KEGS.1

Gallants, attend and hear a friend
Trill forth harmonious ditty;
Strange things I'll tell which late befell
In Philadelphia city.

'Twas early day, as poets say,

Just when the sun was rising,
A soldier stood on a log of wood,
And saw a thing surprising.

As in amaze he stood to gaze,

The truth can't be denied, sir,
He spied a score of kegs or more
Come floating down the tide, sir.

A sailor too, in jerkin blue,

This strange appearance viewing,
First rubb'd his eyes, in great surprise,

Then said some mischief 's brewing.

1 This ballad was occasioned by a real incident. Certain machines, in the form of kegs, charged with gunpowder, were sent down the river to annoy the British shipping then at Philadelphia. The danger of these machines being discovered, the British manned the wharves and shipping, and discharged their small arms and cannons at every thing they saw floating in the river during the ebb tide.

These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold
Pack'd up like pickled herring;
And they're come down t' attack the town,
In this new way of ferrying."

The soldier flew, the sailor too,
And scar'd almost to death, sir,
Wore out their shoes, to spread the news,
And ran till out of breath, sir.

Now up and down throughout the town
Most frantic scenes were acted;
And some ran here, and others there,
Like men almost distracted.

Some fire cried, which some denied,
But said the earth had quaked;
And girls and boys, with hideous noise,
Ran through the streets half naked.

From sleep Sir William starts upright,
Awak'd by such a clatter;

He rubs both eyes, and boldly cries,
For God's sake, what's the matter?

At his bedside he then espied

Sir Erskine at command, sir;
Upon one foot he had one boot,
And th' other in his hand, sir.

"Arise, arise," Sir Erskine cries,
"The rebels-more's the pity-
Without a boat are all afloat,
And rang'd before the city.

"The motley crew, in vessels new,
With Satan for their guide, sir,
Pack'd up in bags, or wooden kegs,
Come driving down the tide, sir.

"Therefore prepare for bloody war,
These kegs must all be routed,
Or surely we despised shall be,
And British courage doubted."
The royal band now ready stand,
All rang'd in dread array, sir,
With stomach stout to see it out,
And make a bloody day, sir.

The cannons roar from shore to shore,
The small arms make a rattle;
Since wars began I'm sure no man
E'er saw so strange a battle.

The rebel dales, the rebel vales,

With rebel trees surrounded;

The distant wood, the hills and floods,
With rebel echoes sounded.

The fish below swam to and fro,
Attack'd from ev'ry quarter;

Why sure, thought they, the devil's to pay
'Mongst folks above the water.

The kegs, 'tis said, tho' strongly made
Of rebel staves and hoops, sir,
Could not oppose their powerful foes,
The conq'ring British troops, sir.

From morn to night these men of might
Display'd amazing courage;

And when the sun was fairly down,
Retir'd to sup their porridge.

An hundred men with each a pen,
Or more, upon my word, sir,
It is most true would be too few
Their valor to record, sir.

Such feats did they perform that day
Against these wicked kegs, sir,
That years to come, if they get home,
They'll make their boast and brags, sir.

JAMES WILSON, 1742-1798.

JAMES WILSON was born in the lowlands of Scotland about the year 1742. After leaving the grammar-school, he studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and, without determining upon any profession, he resolved to emigrate to this country. In the beginning of 1766, he reached Philadelphia. Soon after, he entered, as a student of law, the office of John Dickinson, and in two years was admitted to the bar. He first settled in Reading, but soon removed to Carlisle, where he became quite eminent as a counsellor, and had much practice previous to the Revolutionary struggle. In 1775, by the unanimous voice of the General Assembly, he was elected, with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Willing, to the second Continental Congress, and was re-elected in the next year, when he affixed his name to the Declaration of Independence. In 1778, he removed to Philadelphia, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life.

From his distinguished talents and unremitting industry, Mr. Wilson rose higher every year in public estimation, and was soon considered at the head of his profession. In 1782, he was again elected to Congress, and in 1787 was one of the delegates to the convention that met in Philadelphia to form our present Constitution. He took an active part in the debates, and by some was considered the ablest member of that distinguished body. In the latter part of the same year, he was elected to the State Convention of Pennsylvania that met to ratify the Constitution. As he was the only member of the State Convention who had a seat in the General Convention, he was, of course, the most prominent member in it, and with consummate ability defended the Constitution from the attacks of its enemies.