Of a dozen or more claass-mates, the lapse of more than forty years, puts it out of my power to recognize more than three of them, who are yet alive; though there may be others, settled at a distance. One of those, who was the exception to the idle propensity I have mentioned, has lately filled an important office in the state; another of them, though a boy of good parts and much vivacity, early betook himself to a very retired walk of life, from which he never emerged; and the third, with whom I have ever continued in the closest intimacy and friendship, leads, in ease and affluence on his paternal estate, the happy life of a country gentleman, within a convenient distance of the metropolis.

In making this enumeration, there occurs to me a member who joined us perhaps about a year before I left the college. I cannot call him a boy, since he was married, and for ought I know, between thirty and forty years of age. His puckered cheeks, at least, would have justified the latter part of this conjecture. He was preparing himself for the pulpit of an anabaptist meeting-house, and although the acquisition of his Latin was sufficiently arduous in all conscience, he was yet courageous enough to be looking forward to the attainment also of the Greek and the Hebrew. With a rueful length of visage and features of the coursest mould, his figure was tall, raw-boned and ungainly, and certainly a very heterogeneous ingredient in the mass in which he had chosen to compound it. But he was not more distinguished by the uncouthness of his appearance than by the meekness of his deportment. It was of the back of this overgrown school-boy that Beveridge usually strove to avail himself, in those abortive, flagellating efforts I have mentioned; and the function, however unpleasing to the Brobdingnagian, he had too strong a sense of duty to decline. Such was the personage, who, from a clerical ardor, had been tempted to transform himself into this scho

fastic phenomenon. His name, I think, was Ste vens; and though I have amused myself with the recollection of his ludicrous attributes, it is with still more satisfaction I bear testimony to those, that from their simple benevolence were truly respectable.

Although it was in my fifteenth year, as already mentioned, that I took my leave of the academy, yet the circumstances I am now about to advert to were antecedent to that event, and are to be considered as having taken place within the five years preceding it.

Among the persons who were acquainted and visited at my grandfather's, were doctor Laughlin M'Lean and his lady. The latter rarely missed a day, when the weather was favorable, of calling upon her country woman, my grandmother; and I well remember, she was always attended or rather preceded by a small white dog, enormously fat, in which quality he even exceeded his mistress, who yielded to few of her species and sex, in the possession of an enviable embonpoint. The doctor was considered to have great skill in his profession, as well as to be a man of wit and general information, but I have never known a person who had a more distressing impediment in his speech. Yet, notwithstanding this misfortune, he some years after, on his return to Europe, had the address to recommend himself to a seat in the British house of commons. He is understood to be the same Laughlin M'Lean, who at Edinburg, evinced a generous benevolence in administering to the relief of the celebrated Oliver Goldsmith, as related in the life of that poet; and it is this circumstance which has principally induc ed me to notice him here.

About the year 1760 or 1761, to the best of my recollection, the city was alarmed by a visitation of

the yellow fever. I can say nothing of the extent of its ravages, having been, happily, too young to be infected with the panic it produced, or to have been at all interested in the inquiry, whether it had an adequate cause. My impression rather was, that it was an occurrence by no means to be deprecated, since the schools were shut up, and a vacation of five or six weeks, its fortunate consequence. As the city was deserted by such as could leave it without too much inconvenience, my grandfather took refuge at his country house near Germantown, whither, as one of his family I accompanied him, and remained there until the danger was supposed to be

over.

It was in the fall, probably of this very year, that my mother removed to Philadelphia, in the view of keeping a lodging house, an employment, which in Pennsylvania, has been the usual resource of persons in her situation, that is, of widows, reputably brought up, left in circumstances too slender for the support of their families. She began with taking boys who went to the academy, of which there were generally a number from the southern provinces and the West India islands. Being thus established, I left my grandfather's for her house, and by this change of residence, bid adieu to the old route, which for about two years I had traversed in going to and returning from school, in the winter four times, and in the summer six times a day. I had my choice, indeed, of different streets, and sometimes varied my course; but it generally led me through what is now called Dock street, then a filthy uncovered sewer, bordered on either side by shabby stables and tan-yards. To these, succeeded the more agreeable object of Israel Pemberton's garden (now covered in part by the bank of the United States) laid out in the old fashioned style of uniformity, with walks and allies nodding to their brothers, and decorated with a number of evergreens carefully clipped into

pyramidal and conical forms. Here the amenity of the view usually detained me for a few minutes > Thence, turning Chesnut street corner to the left, and passing a row of dingy two story houses, I came to the Whale bones, which gave name to the alley, at the corner of which they stood. These never ceased to be occasionally an object of some curiosity, and might be called my second stage, beyond which there was but one more general object of attention, and this was to get a peep at the race horses, which in sporting seasons were kept in the widow Nichois's stables, which from her house, (the Indian Queen at the corner of Market street) extended perhaps two thirds or more of the way to Chesnut street. In fact, throughout the whole of my route, the intervals took up as much ground as the buildings; and with the exception of here and there a straggling house, Ffth street might have been called the western extremity of the city.

My course was much shortened by the removal to my mother's, who had taken a house in Arch street, facing the Friends burying ground. The first lads that were placed with her, were two brothers, the sons of a colonel Lewis of Virginia. The younger, named Samuel, about a year older than myself, had the attractions of a pleasing countenance and great gentleness of manners. Though he belonged to a younger class than mine, the living and sleeping together were sufficient to cement a warm attachment between us, and there was not a boy in the school in whose welfare and competitions I took so decided an interest; the ardor of which was in almost perpetual requisition, from the circumstance of his being a champion in the gymnastic exercise of running, which was then the rage. The enthusiasm of the turf had pervaded the academy, and the most extravagant transports of that theatre on the triumph of a favorite horse, were not more zealous and im~ passioned, than were the acclamations which follow

cd the victor in a foot-race round a square. Stripped to the shirt, and accoutred for the heat by a handkerchief bound round the head, another round the middle, with loosened knee-bands, without shoes, or with moccasons instead of them, the racers were started; and turning to the left round the corner of Arch street, they encompassed the square in which the academy stands, while the most eager spectators, in imitation of those who scour across the course at a horse race, scampered over the church burying ground to Fifth street, in order to see the state of the runners as they passed, and to ascertain which was likely to be foremost, on turning Market street corner. The four sides of this square cannot be much less than three quarters of a mile; wherefore, bottom in the coursers, was no less essential than swiftness, and in both, Lewis bore away the palm from every one that dared enter against him. After having in a great number of matches completely triumphed over the academy, other schools were resorted to for racers; but all in vain : Lewis was the Eclipse that distanced every competitor, the swift-footed Achilles, against the vigorous agility of whose straight and well proportioned form, the long legged stride of the overgrown, and the nimble step of the dapper, were equally unavailing. I was scarcely less elated with his triumphs, than if I myself had been the victor: I was even supremely happy in the circumstance, which gave me a claim to a more than common degree of interest in him, and from my experience of the force of these associations, in which, by a kind of metonymy, we take the place of the real agent, I can fully enter into the feelings of the butcher, who, ecstacied at the good behavior of his dog at a bull beating, exclaimed to Charles the second, " Damme, sir, if that is'nt my dog!" Since the time of those exploits, in which I was too young to enter the lists, I have valued myself upon my own agility in running and jumping; but I have never had the vanity to suppose, that