VOL. XXII.

And aping still th' aristocratic bard,
With Crede Jenkins' graved upon his card,
When with his trash he hurries to the press,
Crying O.print me! print me!' in distress,
Some bookseller, perhaps, most kindly cruel,
Uses the dainty manuscript for fuel.

Ah! Ned, hadst thou, when once with rhyme opprest,
Found such a friend, (pray pardon me the jest,)
Hadst thou but been as friendly to thyself,

Thy Poems never had adorned thy shelf.

But all is ended now! John's work is o'er;
He praises, pays, and publishes no more.
Henceforth no volume, save the Book of fate,
Shall hear for him an interest small or great:
And if in heaven his literary soul

Walk the pure pavement where the planets roll,
Few old acquaintances will greet him there,
Amid the radiant light and balmy air;
Since few of all who wrote or sang for him
Shall join the anthem of the seraphim.
Yet there might Fancy, in a mood profane,
Behold him listening each celestial strain,
Catching the cadences that sweetly fall,
Wond ring if such would sell, below, at all,
And calculating, as they say on earth,

How much those heavenly hymns would there be worth.

Or if in Proserpine's more sultry sky
For his misdeeds the Publisher must sigh,
Though much good company about him stand,
And many an author take him by the hand,
And swarms of novelists around him press,
And many a bard return his warm caress,
Though there on all the sinners he shall gaze
Who ever wrote, or planned, or acted plays;
On all the wits, from Anna's time to ours,
Who strewed perdition's pleasant way with flowers;
On BURNS, consumed with more substantial fire
Than ever love or whisky could inspire;
On SHELLEY, seething in a lake of lead,
And BYRON Stretched upon a lava bed;
Little shall he, or they, or any there,
Of magazines or morning journals care;
Little shall there be whispered or be thought,
About the last new book and what it brought;
Little of copyright and Yankee thieves,

Or any wrong that CHARLIE's bosom grieves;
But side by side reviewer and reviewed,
Critic and criticised must all be-stewed;
Alas! they groan-alas! compared with this,
Ev'n BLACKWOOD's drunken surgery was bliss.
How less than little were the direst blows
Dealt by brute GIFFORD on his baby foes!
How light, compared with hell's eternal pain,
The small damnation was of Drury Lane!

Down! down! thou impious, dark Imagination,
Forbear the foul, the blasphemous creation;
Whate'er John's doom, in whatsoever sphere,
Wretched or blest, 't is not for us to hear.
Not many such have dignified his trade,
So boldly bargained and so nobly paid.
Oh may his own Divine Paymaster prove
As kind and righteous in the realms above!
32

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

Harry Harson.

CHAFTER THIRTEENTH.

Ar about eleven o'clock, on a fine day, a tall elderly man, habited in a long-skirted blue overcoat, with a broad-brimmed hat on his head, his neck enveloped in the ample folds of a white cravat, the ends of which toyed pleasantly with the morning air; and having in his hand a cane, whose top was carved in a miniature likeness of a dog with a distressing countenance, slowly descended the precipitous flight of stone steps which form the rear mode of egress from the City Hall. Having safely landed himself, the elderly gentleman paused, rubbed one hand gently over the other, as if congratulating himself that one of the perils of the day was over, and then walked out into the Park, and deliberately set his watch by the town-clock. Being a cautious man, however, and a man of experience, and one who piqued himself on doing every thing better than any one else, and upon being always right when all the rest of the world was wrong, and on being in general in all respects somewhat- but not too much, merely a trifle superior to the ordinary run of mankind; and being aware that the town-clock had four faces, which always differed in opinion as to the hour; and being too knowing to be taken in by any small trick of that kind, he winked to himself, and took the pains to make the circuit of the building, and successively to inspect each face of the aforesaid public time-keeper; and having ascertained that the majority was with the one which he had first consulted, he pulled his waistcoat very high up in front and dropped his watch into a small pocket in the waistband of his trowsers. After which, he buttoned his coat and set about his day's work with no little complacency and good humor.

The direction which he took led to one of the poorer parts of the town; and although he walked slowly, it was not long before he was in the thick of those narrow, ill-ventilated streets, hemmed in by decaying houses and reeking cellars, which proclaim, plainer than words, that vice and want, and a thousand other ills which canker the heart, and eat up all that is noble in human nature, are lurking in their dark recesses.

Mr. Chicken, for he it was, paused in front of one of the dim holes, where a dozen wretched beings, ill clad and ill fed, were herding together, and wondered why they would live in such places; and why they did not pay more attention to their dress; really, it was exceedingly shocking; some of them were half naked.

'It's

quite indelicate, quite!' said he, mentally: Mrs. Chicken would die if she saw it. I declare, I won't be positive-no, yes - no; yet I do think one of them is a woman; I really do think that rug is meant for a petticoat. It must be a woman,' said he, continuing his investigations in a cautious manner. It is a woman.' Ah! it's agin natur.'

There was no doubt of the truth of his suspicion; half of them were females. Squatting and crouching there, they raised their blear eyes toward him in sullen indifference; too miserably wretched to heed or resent the look of disgust and surprise which met theirs, other than by a heartless laugh or a ribald jest; too callous to feel, and too broken down in body and soul to taunt. The deputy-sheriff shook his head, for although he had often been amid scenes where the strong heart was wrung; where the debtor, ground down by creditors with hearts of flint, and eyes greedy of gold, was struggling beneath the fangs of the law, and crying for indulgence and mercy: although he had seen the calm, pale look of despair; the silent but resolute face of the man who had parted with his all, and finally yielded his body for the gold which he could not pay; and the wife clasping his neck, and his children clinging. to him; ay, actually showing marks of affection to a man who was penniless; yet he had rarely encountered a den like this. He had only witnessed suffering and despair in their first stages. Had he desired to see the human soul when hope had darkened into desperation; when friends had fallen off, or less painful than that, had died; when the body had been wasted, and the blood dried up, and yet had yielded no gold; when even that untiring thing, a creditor, had grown weary of his prey, and had flung his victim adrift, to find none to sympathize, no path open, no home left, and even hope dead; he should have lingered a little longer; and in common with the born thief, the hardened courtezan, the reeling drunkard, and the savage brawler, he would have found those whom the sun of prosperity had once warmed, and who once had little dreamed in what foul haunts they would linger out the remnant of life which was yet in store for them.

Mr. Chicken, however, having already expressed his opinion, merely shook his head disapprovingly, on concluding his investigation, and said nothing, but kept on, now turning into one narrow street to the right, then striking into another to the left; now stumbling along broken pavements, and dilapidated steps; at one time half stifled with exhalations which steamed up from reeking kennels and under-ground dwellings, until he finally emerged into a broader street; but still the dwellings were of a meaner cast. Stopping in front of one of these, he stealthily drew out his pocketbook, took from it a small slip of paper, looked at it, then at the house; coughed several times; cleared his throat emphatically and fixed his hat firmly on his head; buttoned his coat to the chin, placed his cane under his left arm, and grasping the small paper firmly in his right hand, like one preparing for a mortal struggle, precipitated himself headlong into a dark alley. Stumbling over a

broken pail, a log of wood, and a few minor articles of a domestic description, which usually beset benighted alleys and dim stairways, the sheriff's deputy finally caught sight of daylight in a small yard, with which the passage communicated, and found himself at the door of a dilapidated house, built in the rear of one fronting on the street.

It was a small faded building, two stories high, sinking and crumbling away, like a person weak in the side. Narrow windows, cracked and dust-covered, looked out into the dark yard. A broken flower-pot stood on a window sill with a stunted bush in it, bearing a single yellow leaf; and in another, was a half-starved shrub endeavoring to keep the life in a drooping flower. On the roof, which abutted on other roofs, and was overlooked by tall buildings, a lean cat was dozing in the sun, as if endeavoring to forget hunger in sleep. Every thing bore the stamp of starvation. The windows too were patched with rags, or pieces of paper; the bricks from ruined chimneys had toppled down, and were lying in masses on the roof; there were great, gaping seams between the boards, showing the plaster within; the door had sagged away, and the shutters of more than one window hung by a single hinge. On the door-steps a child was sleeping, and from a narrow window a thin face peeped cautiously out, wondering what a stranger could want in that dreary quarter.

The sheriff's deputy, however, was familiar with the ground. He was in the habit of fishing in troubled waters; and it was not the first time that he had drawn from this very place food for the gaol.

Without asking a question, he quietly stepped over the sleeping child, and stooping as he entered, to prevent his hat coming in contact with the top of the low door-way, he ascended a crooked staircase, carefully picking his way; grumbling at its inconvenient formation, and indulging a few mental anathemas against old houses in general. At the head of the stairs a door was ajar; and without knocking, he pushed it open, entered, and shut it; standing ready to place his back against it, in case he should observe any indication of an attempt on the part of the occupant to escape. This precaution, however, was unnecessary; for the only person there was a man of about forty, with a stern, resolute face, a sharp, gray eye, and strongly built, who was writing at a table, which, with the exception of a bed in a corner, and two chairs, constituted the entire furniture of the room; who merely looked up as his visitor entered, and without removing his eyes from him, said:

'Methinks that common courtesy entitles a man to a knock at his door before his room is entered. Though perhaps,' he added, bitterly, 'the owner of such quarters as these is only entitled to courtesy according to his means.'

To neither of these remarks did Mr. Chicken make any reply ; but gradually sidling up to the speaker, until he came within arm's length, he tapped him on the shoulder, and said:

'I arrest you, Sir. It's a very onpleasant duty; but it is a duty, and must be did. Here's the writ.'

The man eyed him for a moment; apparently meditating what course to pursue; while Mr. Chicken grasped the head of the dog on his cane, and assumed an air of desperate determination. At last the man took the paper from his hand, and read it through, without moving or speaking, although his face became somewhat flushed, as he read. Then he merely uttered the words, 'Michael Rust!'

'He's the plaintiff,' said Mr. Chicken, 'and you are the defendant, Enoch Grosket. It's onpleasant, Sir, quite onpleasant; but I'm a deputy-sheriff, Sir; and you 're a defendant; and here's the writ; and duty must be did. That's the long and short of it.'

'So this is the end of the game,' said Grosket to himself; 'this is the reward of five years of servitude, the most vile and degraded that ever bound man to his fellow man. A noble harvest have I reaped, for seed that I have sown!- a glorious close to my labors! But it is what I might have looked for. Ah! Michael Rust! well have you carried out your schemes!-a pleasant part have you played in my family! You have sent child and wife both to their graves; the one dishonored, the other broken-hearted; and now, a prison for the father. Be it so, Michael Rust; but the game is not yours yet. If you win it, it must be at the cost of a struggle, which will rack all your sinews. I do not understand this claim,' said he, in a musing tone; three thousand dollars?' I owe him nothing. What can it be? Edward Kornicker, attorney.' Who's he?' he asked, raising his eyes from the paper to those of Mr. Chicken. 'I never heard of him.'

Mr. Chicken drew down the corners of his mouth, and smiled; at the same time saying, that Mr. Kornicker was a young man of some merit, but rather wild — a little wild.

Having said this, he took a seat in the vacant chair, and placed his hat on the table; at the same time telling Mr. Grosket that he did not wish to hurry him, but that if he had any bail to offer, he would go with him in search of it. If he had n't, he would be under the less pleasant necessity of escorting him to gaol; and in either case, that he, the said Mr. Chicken, being a public functionary, and much pressed by business, would take it as a personal favor if Mr. Grosket would hasten his movements as much as possible. Grosket shook his head, despairingly.

I

No,' said he; 'the sum is too large-six thousand dollars! know of no one who will become bail for me in such an amount. Had it come but a day later, one single day later,' said he, clasping his hands tightly together, and he, not I would have been the victim!'

6

'Well, Sir,' said Mr. Chicken, there being no bail, in course there is no alternative. You must go to gaol; rooms small, but well ventilated. You'll find yourself very comfortable there arter a fortnight or so. There is folks that quite like the place.'

Grosket made no reply to this comforting remark; but stood with