with him, than a shop-keeper's receipt for in tea-table gossip, that the man was profour dollars sixty-six cents. Yet with these, digiously smitten with the woman, or her and some other similar peculiarities, Yohon- snug cottage-home with its handsome nes Vantyle was generally much liked: for grounds, and that the woman was no wise he was hospitable at all times, and on occa-loth to give the man right and title to the sions liberal to a degree.

real property, in consideration of his taking with it the personal incumbrance.-Tea is a great quickener of the fancy; too much, therefore, of what passes between ladies over their cups, should never be received as gospel truth. In the present case, however, it may be presumed there was a foundation for what was said with respect to Mr. Clymers and Miss Simper; for the former had a very correct notion of the value of lands and tenements, and the latter had reached that "certain age " when the taste is not apt to be very fastidious.

There resided in the village at this time, one Clymer Clymers, who reported himself a native of Bristol, England, and who, according to his own account, had been in the United States about five years. Nothing, save what he told himself, was known of him except for the last twentyfour months, all which time he had spent in the village, as a poster of books, teacher of penmanship, cleanser and drawer of teeth, school-master, and-so-forth. This Clymers was one of a class of personages, two or three specimens of which, perhaps, cross There was in the village at this time, a one's path in the course of a life time. He very respectable school, dignified, in the was an ill-bred, bustling, strutting little fel- spirit of the age, with the title of Academy; low, who was always thrusting his diminu- and over this had presided, for about five tive figure into everybody's presence, and months, Mr. Clymer Clymers. As has interesting himself in everybody's business. been stated, the little Bristolian had become There was nothing which he did not know unpopular with those who furnished to the better than any one else, and nothing which school its principal support; and the genhe could not do-but pursue some reputable tlemen to whom Cunningham, at the time calling for a livelihood, and cease meddling entirely ignorant of this fact, had mentioned with the affairs of other people.-A coun- his desire to become a teacher, considered try town is the best theater in the world the present an excellent opportunity of getfor such a dignitary's performances. He there finds the right kind of materials to work with, and proper stuff in abundance to operate upon. While he is successful in screening himself from observation, he may move the puppets of society about at pleasure, and much to the astonishment of all beholders: but so soon as he suffers himself to be caught working the wires, the About a week after this, Clymers receiv"Punch and Judy" game is up.-Clymers ed from the proper authorities a note, rehad run quite a successful career of mis-questing him to resign his situation. It was chief-making; but he had of late had so ma- couched in respectful language, but hinted ny eyes upon him, that he was unable to at various matters displeasing to the trustees elude observation; and about the time of and others, which the pedagogue knew it Cunningham's arrival, he had rendered him- was impossible for him to explain to the self very unpopular among the more intelli- satisfaction of any one. He therefore regent portion of the community. plied, on the instant, that he had some time before come to the determination to retire at the expiration of the quarter then nearly through, and was glad his views coincided so well with those of his employers!

In nearly all things a counterpart to Clymer Clymers, was Miss Henrietta Simper, a maiden lady of the village, who had a handsome little property, lived in a pleasant little cottage, and paraded through the streets, in a mincing gait, a not uncomely little body. Miss Simper and Mr. Clymers had for some time been on what are usually called "intimate terms;" and it had of late been given out by the elderly ladies of the village,

ting rid of one whose incompetency as an instructer was fast becoming apparent to all. They immediately consulted with others, then convinced themselves of Cunningham's merits as a man and qualifications as a teacher, and soon determined that he should succeed the present incumbent of the Academy preceptorship.

The time elapsed, and Clymers withdrew from the preceptorship. The situation was offered to Cunningham, and by him immediately and gladly accepted. With the commencement of the new session, he entered upon the discharge of his duties as

creek, and terminating in a border of blackberry and rasp-berry bushes, that sprang up along the stone-hedge which inclosed the

Preceptor. A few weeks sufficed to convince the trustees that they had made a most happy change in the head of their school, and confided the important trust grounds in that direction. At one end of which Cunningham now held, to one every way worthy of it. The young New-Englander was somewhat diffident, and rather retiring in his habits: nevertheless, having inspired very general confidence in his ability as a teacher, and his worth as a man, he won rapidly upon the esteem of the villagers.

CHAPTER IV.

THE VANTYLE HOMESTEAD.

the house was a fine apple-orchard, and at the other a fine peach-orchard. Immediately in its rear, lay the well-arranged garden grounds, inclosed by a white paling fence; and beyond them, the barn, stables, cribs, and other out-houses pertaining to an extensive farm, presented quite a group of varying

structures.

A few rods to the right of these, and standing alone, was an old and curious log building. A thick growth of burdock, and mullen, and tansy, had sprung up about it; and this, from appearance, had not been grubbed, or mowed, or trampled, for years. ABOUT a mile from the Dutch Village, At one end of the cabin, a creeper-vine had ran a limpid and beautiful little stream, grown up and multiplied a million-fold; at called Rock-Hollow creek. It wound the other, a grape-vine had rivaled it; and handsomely through the tract of country the two met in embrace on the black clapwhich had been " located" by the compa board roof, where, undisturbed by the ny of emigrants, as mentioned in a prece- pruning-knife, they had increased and minding chapter. Much of its course was gled scions for many a long year. The through a beautiful district of forest and glass was broken out, and the chimney had meadow land; but occasionally its shores tumbled down; but the window-sash rewere rugged and picturesque. Near the mained, and were whole, and the hearth, village, it bounded over a rocky bed, and though sunken and moss-grown, had not shot through a dark and wild ravine: hence lost a stone. An occasional leaning post, the name, bestowed upon it by the first set- and a high growth of weeds, alder, and curtlers. After a course like this of several rant-bushes, indicated the direction and exhundred yards, the rocky and abrupt shores gradually disappeared, a handsome forest of beech, hickory, walnut and maple, stretched along upon one side, and upon the other cultivated grounds sloped gently up towards the village.

tent of an old garden-spot; the pickets, some lying upon the ground rotten, others leaning against the rank shrubbery, were almost hidden from view. Near the center of the spot, an old pear-tree had suffered so numerous a progeny to spring up from its These latter were the possession of Yo- roots, that all the sap was required to nourhonnes Vantyle. Some forty or fifty acres ish them: it had consequently, years before, of delightful southern slope, lay along the had its vitals torn out by its own descenwater-course for a considerable distance, im- dants; and it now stood a melancholy mediately after the termination of the rocky wreck, leafless, barkless, and almost branchravine. It was near the center of this, that less,-surrounded by an ambitious growth the family mansion of the Vantyles display- of young trees, each striving to overtop its ed its long white piazza, and substantial companions.-Such were the more striking stone walls. It was a commodious and appearances of the old garden-spot. Near somewhat tasty structure, the building of one corner of it, was a neat enclosure of a which had consumed not a little of the pro- few yards square, containing two graves ceeds of the town lots aforementioned. It covered with plain slabs. And around the was familiarly called, from its position, the whole-the decayed house, the venerable Hollow-House; and a more pleasantly situ- vines, the neglected garden, the skeleton ated mansion, no one would wish to ramble tree, and the simple burial-place-there around and lounge about of a summer's reigned an air of breathless quiet, and reday. A green lawn, dotted with an occa-ligious repose.

sional pear, and plum, and cherry tree, Here, in former times, had been the spread in front, running nearly down to the dwelling-spot of the Vantyles; the old log

house was their original domicil in the racter and intellect of a superior stamp.West; in it had a son and a daughter been And, himself without any education, and born to Yohonnes-the first of whom slum- ignorant of the inestimable blessing of bered beneath one of the slabs in the little which he was depriving his child, he took inclosure; and here had a wife, the first her away from the school before she had love and the last of his honest heart, been gotten sufficiently advanced in the rudiments taken from him, and consigned to the earth; of learning to pursue her studies at home. side by side slept the wife and the son-the Her mind, ever active and inquiring, had mother and the child. The house and received a direction and an excitement duthe grounds, hallowed by many deep and ring her brief attendance at the school, tender recollections, and forever associ- which were not at once to be forgotten. ated with the memory of passions extin- She found much of her taste for former guished, and dreams unrealized, and feel- amusements gone, and became restless and ings now blunted, Yohonnes regarded with unhappy, though she hardly understood a sacredness, which permitted them never anything of the cause. Several times she to be disturbed. asked her father again to send her to school; Oh-tell me not that the rough garb co- but he refused; and to escape a state of exvers only the rough bosom; nor that the istence which, without her knowing why, rough bosom is not the abode of the kind- was now irksome and intolerable, she belier feelings, and the holier affections. I came a voluntary assistant of Katrina the believe it not. No: there be those at the house-keeper, and spent much of her time plough and by the anvil, capable of the tru- in domestic employments.-Content again est friendship, the holiest devotion, the most took possession of her young bosom; and enduring love: a friendship, that shall not she soon became, much to the delight of her fail in the hour of trial-a devotion, that is father, a rosy and romping little dairy-maid. unmingled with aught of worldly consideration-a love, that the grave alone shall subdue.

The only living being, in whose veins ran the blood of Yohonnes Vantyle, was his daughter Mary, a girl at this time of some fifteen years. Of the early life of the Heiress of Rock-Hollow, I shall say but little. Left without a mother at a very early age, and about the same time deprived of her brother, she became the one object of a doating father's love. And although a house-keeper was provided for the establishment soon after her mother's death, yet over her no authority was given; and for several years the summer days of the wild young thing, were spent culling and wreathing flowers in the garden, chasing butterflies over the meadows, and sporting on the green lawn with two or three playmates of her own years and sex. Arrived at the age of nine or ten, she was sent for three or four quarters to a common English school in the Village. But she had so long been one of the principal sources of her fond parent's amusements, that he could ill bear to be separated from her so much as her attendance at school made necessary. He had originally consented to her going, only after the repeated and urgent solicitations of one of the parents of her young playmates, who had detected in the child indications of cha

At the age of fifteen, Mary Vantyle was not only the sprightliest, and tidiest, and rosiest lass in the neighborhood, but she could make the best smear-case and sour-krout that were to be had within a month's ride, and milk a cow in less time than any one else in the country. At quilting-parties and apple-cuttings she was always the ripest for a "play;" and at corn-shuckings, to which in those early times our backwoods fair always turned out, the beaux of the village, and the sturdy younkers of the surrounding country, preferred standing by the side of Mary to being by that of any other damsel within their knowledge. A doubt of the propriety of yielding the usual forfeit for every red ear found by her companion, had never crossed her brain; and upon such occasions, she made no practice of burying her pretty cheek in her folded arms. never, however, allowed the fortunate swains to overstep the strict boundaries of propriety, as they were understood in those simple days, much as she set some of them to sighing and wooing: all was the result of her downright good common sense, pertness, and prettiness. There was something perfectly irresistible, in the expression of her roguish blue eye, the peach-blossom of her fair oval cheeks, and the easy naturalness of her manners; and many an honest youth carried an aching heart in his breast, for

She

weeks after having stood by her at the corn- his life been used to, turning the head of his heap, sat by her at the apple-cutting, or daughter, tearing from her bosom, by the rompt with her at the quilting-party. Still, very roots, nearly every feature of the race as for sighing and wooing, or being wooed from which she has sprung, and metamorand sighed after, neither had ever given a phosing the home of his old age into a likemoment's uneasiness to the bewitching ness of the rich and gay mansions of the young heiress. vain and the foolish.

CHAPTER V.

THE DUTCHMAN'S DAUGHTER.

Mary Vantyle was a girl of spirit; and notwithstanding the veneration of her father for ancient usages, she had proved herself, in every sense, a complete and thoroughgoing innovator. The lower part of the Hollow-House, although Yohonnes reposed the most unlimited confidence in his old housekeeper Katrina, had recently been newly furnished under Mary's immediate direction; and though some articles of the furniture did not sort so well with others as a good eye would desire, yet, for a wild country girl, who never, often as she had been in the houses of the better sort of people in the village, appeared to see anything but the capering kittens and the flowers on the mantle-piece, nor to think of anything but fun from morn till night, Mary had displayed in the selection and arrangement not a little good taste.

The patriarch often sighed for the simple ways and solid enjoyments of a former day; but he could not find it in his heart, such was his love for his daughter, to deny her in what he saw contributed to her happiness. She was therefore at this early age mistress of herself at least, and had her own way in everything. The worst and hardest shock to the patriarch's prejudices, however, had not yet arrived; but it was just at hand.

'Twas a cool moonlight evening, in the latter part of August. In an old arm-chair, upon the back piazza of the Hollow-House, sat Yohonnes Vantyle, with his consoling pipe, which had been his constant companion for many years. Mary was absent at a small party in the neighborhood; it was waxing well towards midnight, and he wondered why she did not return. Two or three times he rose from his chair, waddled from one end of the piazza to the other, looked away into the still distance, and listened attentively to catch the wild laugh and the gay tones of his child.

The absent came not; and wearied at Nature sometimes plays very strange length with his watching, the anxious parent freaks with the members of the human threw himself into his chair, adjusted the family. We now see a poor shoemaker stem of his pipe in his mouth and the bowl elevated to a conspicuous place in the coun- in his lap, and leaned back against the wall. cils of a great nation-now a roving printer In this position, he gave himself up entiretaking his stand with the wisest and great-ly to revery and the influence of the preest philosophers the world has produced- cious weed; and it was not long till his now a notoriously idle student shaking the strong-holds of despotism with the power of his eloquence-now an unknown and indigent orphan winning his way to the highest trust within the bestowal of a free people -now a poor peasant girl seating herself at the side of an emperor, his espoused bride and now a subaltern soldier hewing his way to a throne, dictating to princes and kings, and threatening to prostrate the liberties of the world.

senses were steeped in oblivion. From fixed habit, he still continued to draw at the pipe; but the issues of smoke were "few and far between." As these rose slowly above his head, and gathered themselves into curious forms, visions of strange shape thronged his waking fancy. After sundry disagreeable adventures in the land of dreams, he was suddenly carried to the pleasant banks of the Susquehanna. Here he lived over again the life of his boyhood Such are some of the odd freaks of old-performing its labors with comparative Dame Nature. And in the instance now before us, we behold her entering the domicil of an honest old Dutchman, and, notwithstanding his abhorrence of everything in the least degree different from what he has all

ease and miraculous dispatch, and enjoying its sports with a hearty zest. Suddenly came on his young manhood-with its cares, and vexations, and disappointments, and its occasional gleams of the sunlight of joy,

66

But vat kept you

“Oh, we'd such a fine time, and so much fun! But I've got something to tell you. I'm going to school"

"No, no-tat's nonsense."

"But I am. They turned off Old Cly

"No, no, Pauley: you can't pe shpared. It ishn't any ushe, any how?"

Then flashed upon him, instantaneously awake, and such a squeezing as you have and with almost blinding splendor, the pe- given me-u-g-h!" riod of his warm love-when he had wooed Never mind, gall. and won the pretty orphan girl, notwith- so?" standing the disparity in their age, to become his bride. All was strange, and he felt bewildered. Surely there was no deception; it was his proper self; yonder was the substantial farm-house of his fathers -here swept the clear waters of the Susque-mers, you know, whom the girls hated so; hanna-and there were the green banks of and they say the new master gets them that beautiful river. He looked around, along so fast-and I mean to go to school and started-for he now stood upon the again." very spot where he and his betrothed had plighted their faith, with burning words, and sealed it with their lips. But where was she? A melancholy feeling came over him, and he seated himself upon the grassy bank. A spell was upon him, and there was bitterness in it, and wonder, and fear, and a vague consciousness that all this had been, and that it was now but a dream. He looked around again and at the instant a light-hearted laugh broke upon his ear: he started, for it was that of his betrothed. Then came her gay tones, sweet and musical-and next, her tidy person broke upon "Pshaw, gall! Vere ish te ushe! his vision. It was not a dream, then: this cows vill giff none more milk-te putter vill was the reality, and the indistinct impres-pring none more monish-te fruit vill grow sion that all these things had been-that none more faster-te krout vill pe none was the dream! The betrothed had companions; but from these she parted, at some distance, and approached her lover "I don't care-I haven't thought about

"Yes, it is use. There was a book there to-night, called the--I forget what-but it had such a curious story in, of an old man named "

"Nonsense, gall! nonsense."

It

"No it wa'n't nonsense, father. was right curious; and the girls could all read but me and Sally Mentz-and I felt so ashamed! Sally may do as she pleases, but I mean to go to the school. Why, I shall hereafter feel so "

more petter-tc"

Te

alone. How beautiful did she appear to it, till now, for ever so long--Monhim-how much more beautiful than she day's my birth-day, and then I mean to had ever looked before. He sprang to his

feet, and ran to meet her; he opened his arms, and received her within their embrace; he pressed her to his bosom; and, as he felt her soft lips touch his own, his very extremities thrilled with a sensation of delight. He added fervor to his embrace, and

"O, father-father!" shouted Mary Vantyle, "how hard you squeeze me. I declare, I'll never kiss you again!"

Pauley! Pauley!" exclaimed the old man, releasing his daughter, and rising hastily,-"ish tis you?"

go."

"Go?-Go to ped, vixen, unt get up mit your senses," said the parent a little angrily, as they entered the house.

Something further passed, as they ascended to their chambers; and ere they sepa rated for the night, much as Yohonnes's prejudices were against such a step, he was compelled to consent to what he termed, and honestly considered, the "tam nonsense of his daughter. Perhaps the old gentleman had heard something of the stories of Dr. Faustus; but be that as it may, he thought all learning was of the Evil One, and tended only to corrupt the human heart, and draw people's attention from the useful avocations of life. Still, softened it may be, by his late dream, and the recollections it had awakened, he could not, when his "A minute ago-My company have just daughter, before going to her pillow, came left me, and aint out of sight yet-And I to his bedside and bent down and kissed found you asleep, and came to kiss you him, and said in a beseeching tone,

"Is it me? Why-father-for shame! -who did you think it was but me? Such a hugging! I shall never"

"I musht a'f peen treaming, sure! ven tid you get home, gall?"

Put