lumbering, I can tell you; and he used to say that his father was raised in Scotland, somewhere about Kilmarnock, where they make hosiery that whips all creation. So, when I was down in the north, I went to that location-no parks there, I can tell you; the folk have too much gumption for that-and I began to poke up for my ancestors. I'm blest if I mightn't as well have tried to whistle a grape-vine from a whiteoak! No man's telescope there was pulled out to reach beyond gaze of his father. I put an advertisement into the papers, to the effect that any person who could give information regarding a certain Ewins, who was supposed to have emigrated from Kilmarnock about the year 1770, would hear of something to his advantage; and then, jewhillikens! if I didn't get as many letters as ever reached the President of the United States when a place in the customs was vacant. There were Ewinses, and Ewings, and Ewarts, and Irvings, and Owens, and Eunsons, all mad to know if there was any legacy forthcoming, and all ready to swear that they were the legitimate descendants. I guess I cut them as short as a barkeeper would a loafer's tally! I didn't calculate, when I wrote the notice, on bringing a whole bilin' of suckers about my legs; so I jest put the letters in the fire, and absquatulated from Kilmarnock as smart as if the yellow fever had been there."

"It must be confessed that such an advertisement was calculated to stimulate the rapacity of the ravens. It was as alluring as the old wartune of the clan Cameron, 'Come to me, and I will give you flesh.' But what occurred next, Mr Ewins?"

"Why then, I pulled up stakes and went to Edinburgh. A mighty proud kind of chaps they are in that city, head and tail up like chicken-cocks in laying-time; but I scraped acquaintance with one or two fellows that were not so offish and stuck-up as the rest, among others an old lawyer called Shearaway."

"Ah, my kind old friend! I hope you left him well?"

"As tight as the bark of a tree," replied Mr Ewins. "He's a 'cute old 'coon is Shearaway; for when I told

him what I was after, he sniggered like a hog in a beanfield, and said it was the easiest thing in the creation to get my pedigree made out, and that he knew a first-chop hand at genealogies, who would rummage out the history of every Ewins that had cut teeth, only I must lay my account to come down handsomely with the dollars. I said I didn't mind standing up to the rack for once in a way; so he introduced me to a queer old hunker of the name of M'Scutcheon, a chap with a mouldy wig and fishy eyes, who asked me the names of my father and grandfather, and then said that he would make the proper inquiries, and had not the least doubt that he would succeed in finding me a pedigree. 'But,' says he, Mr Ewins, how far back would you wish me to go, for that makes some difference in the cost?' 'Go the whole figure, old hoss!' says I;' Right it up to the beginning of time!' That's enough, sir,' says he;' you shall hear from me in the course of a fortnight.'

"I hope," said I, "that the result was in every way satisfactory."

"I guess it was; though, when I saw the bill, I allow I was as wrathy as a ram-cat in a shower-bath. But it ain't many dukes in England that have got such a pedigree as mine, I can tell you; and when I go back to the United States, my! won't I hold up my head like a Narragansett pacer? Won't I be a big bug there? Oh, no!"

Here Mr Ewins hitched up his trousers in an ecstasy of supreme delight, grinned, chuckled, and expectorated.

"Darned if it ain't stuniferous!" he continued. "I say, mister, you're a kinder judge of these things; suppose, now, you jest step with me to my hotel, and I'll show you something that'll allfiredly astonish you."

As a matter of course I accepted the invitation, for I was really curious to know how far the ingenious M'Scutcheon had pushed his inventive powers in a case which was by no means promising. I was aware that the said M'Scutcheon was a fellow of infinite fancy. He had concocted claims to no less than four Nova Scotia baronetcies which were popularly supposed to be extinct; and

got his clients served, by complaisant juries, to titles of honour which they had no more real right to assume than I have to take upon me the style of the Cham of Tartary. Likewise he had made a most gallant but unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate a defunct earldom, by fabricating a galvanic chain of honour between a younger brother of the last peer and his own employer; of which chain, on strict investigation, only two links proved to be spurious. But on the wide common field of heraldry, where no challenge was to be expected, M'Scutcheon ruled without a rival. He could find you a progenitor of note and eminence at any particular period of history you might happen to desire, and establish the reality of his quondam existence by extracts from charter and sasine. Ancestors he would furnish to order, just as a dealer of Wardour Street can provide you, at an hour's notice, with a complete series of family portraits; and if you wished for a dash of the bloodroyal, why, you could have it injected into your veins for the moderate extra charge of fifteen guineas. Purchasers of pedigrees are invariably men with long purses; and Mr M'Scutcheon, in his award of the honours of descent, was scrupulous in one respect only-viz., that the honours should be in exact correspondence to the magnitude of the honorarium which he received.

On arriving at his hotel, Mr Ewins desired the waiter to fetch two rummers of a peculiar compound called "pig and whistle," of which he had furnished the recipe; and these being discussed, he produced from a closet a tubular japanned case, such as is used for holding plans, whereon was inscribed, in large letters of gold, "FAMILY TREE OF EWINS OF THAT ILK."

"That, I consider, Squire, is no small potatoes!" said the Ewins, pointing with exultation to the scroll. "But wait till you see what's within. I guess it's up to the rub; a sight of that will raise Cain throughout the Union!"

And he drew out a long roll of parchment, which he deliberately unfolded. It was an ancestral tree, got up in M'Scutcheon's very best

There, mister! What do you think of that for a beginning?" shouted the exulting Yankee. "Ain't that a rumfoozler? Darned if I don't feel as proud as a tame turkey!" And he went whirling round the apartment like an inspired teetotum.

I confess that I felt a strong inclination to give audible vent to my inward mirth; nevertheless, by a powerful effort, I restrained myself; for there is no subject upon which men are so touchy as that of their descent; and though I could hardly suppose that Mr Ewins had implicit faith in the veracity of M'Scutcheon, he was clearly interested in maintaining the genuineness of the document for which he had paid so exorbitant a price. I therefore contented myself with tracing the high house of Ewins from so auspicious a root to the present representative. I must admit that it gave me a high idea of the genius of the framer. The Maormors speedily disappeared; but the introduction of the feudal system was marked by the apparition of one Evanus de Clackmannan, whose son, however, for some reason unassigned, dropped the territorial title, and appeared simply as Reginald FitzEwin, miles. It appeared that the grandson of this modest soldier, having divested himself of the Fitz, had received a grant from the Crown (tempore Roberti Tertii) of certain lands in Ayrshire, which were erected into a barony, and thereafter the family was designated as Ewins of that İlk. There was a Sir Ludowick Ewins, who died at Flodden, and a Sir James Ewins, who, very stupidly, involved himself in the Bothwell business in Queen Mary's time; whereupon the estates passed to a younger branch, who enjoyed them without molestation until the period

of the Civil Wars, when the Ewins of the day joined the Marquis of Montrose, and incurred forfeiture as the penalty. The rich Barony of Ewins was then gifted to the powerful Earls of Glencairn, who, in order to obliterate all memory of the ancient possessors, the descendants of the Maormors, changed the name of the estate, which is now known by the base appellation of Puddockholes. The Ewinses were thenceforth landless, but undismayed. Walter Ewins, the male representative of the race, was a soldier of fortune in the Low Countries, attained the rank of colonel, and served under Viscount Dundee in his desperate attempt to retrieve the waning fortunes of the Stuarts. After the fall of his great commander he retired to France, where he received from the grateful but dethroned monarch the St Germains title of Lord Dyvourstone, which, however, he did not assume. He married the daughter of a French fermier general, and begat two sons-Charles Louis, of whom more anon, and Jacques, his younger brother, whose line terminated by the death, on the field of Borodino, of the celebrated Comte d'Ouaines, for whom, as is well known, had he survived that bloody fight, the great Napoleon had reserved the honour of the baton of a marechal. Charles Louis, who was engaged in commercial affairs, did not, as a matter of course, turn out in the 1745; but he did what was quite as foolish -viz., advanced large sums of money to the insurgents, especially to the unfortunate Earl of Kilmarnock, who suffered upon Tower Hill. According to M'Scutcheon, who now quoted from what he called "the Pittenweem Papers," documents which possibly may exist, but have never been printed, Charles Louis Ewins came to Scotland with the view of ascertaining whether, on account of bonds granted previous to the Rebellion, he was not entitled to rank as a creditor on the Kilmarnock estate. When there, news reached him that the house in which his whole capital was embarked had gone to smash; and being too proud, under such circumstances, to return to France, he contracted a matrimonial alliance

with Jean Puddifute, a daughter of Puddifute of Cowthrapple. Being unable to maintain himself as a gentleman ought to do, and being exceedingly unwilling to defile his fingers with any touch of manufactures, Charles Louis Ewins emigrated to America, where his son Enoch, the lumberer, was ushered into the world. Enoch begat Aaron Ewins, whose calling was that of an itinerant merchant; and Aaron was the father of my friend Jefferson Job Ewins, in whose person the honours of this illustrious line were now concentrated.

Such was the information I gathered from the ancestral tree, and an appended historical memoir; and I could not but admire the dexterity with which M'Scutcheon had piloted the family through the vicissitudes of so many centuries. Of a surety there was something extravagantly preposterous in the idea that the blood of the remorseless Macbeth, the slayer of the gracious Duncan, circulated in the veins of the eccentric Yankee; nevertheless, if the compilations of modern heralds are to be relied on, such anomalies are by no means of rare occurrence.

However, to do Mr Ewins justice, I must say that, after the first burst of exultation was over, he ceased to harp upon his ancestry, and dropped the subject so soon as the scroll was returned to its case. I devoutly wish that people who have a somewhat better authenticated pedigree than his would imitate his example, for I know of no greater trial to the temper than being compelled to listen to the harangues of a fellow who persists, on all occasions, in glorifying himself by parading his dull genealogy. Gentlemen who are addicted to this silly practice cannot surely be aware that the effect which it produces on their audience is extremely detrimental to themselves, since it engenders a strong suspicion that they have nothing else to boast of, and that they are trying to cover their personal insignificance by vapouring about their blazons and their quarterings.

Mr Ewins then proceeded without any reserve, his heart being apparently opened by this confidential communication, to detail his plans

for the future. He had intended, he said, to return early in the spring to America; but the prospect of gain arising from speculation, which the English share-market promised, was so tempting that he had changed his mind. Already he had dealt largely in scrip, with far more profitable results than legitimate trading could have produced; and, gratified as he was by the mere fact of his having cleared several thousand dollars, the patriotic reflection that they were drawn from the pockets of the Britishers gave a double zest to his enjoyment. Nor can I imagine that any man was ever better qualified, through natural aptitude and training, to enter the lists of speculation than the representative of all the Ewinses. He was thoroughly conversant with the principles and practice of what is called in America "the grab game;" he was an adept in the mystery by means of which fluctuations in "fancy stocks" can be effected; and in " cornering," which is a choice Transatlantic mode of rigging the market, he boasted that he had never found an equal. It must be remembered that the vast majority of the British public who were infected by the prevalent gambling mania, knew little or nothing of the secrets of the Stock Exchange, but were simply blind players who put down their stakes at random. An old hand like Ewins, who, though possibly never a pigeon, was now a most accomplished hawk, had them entirely at his mercy; which quality, however, as it does not pertain to the accipitrine order of fowls, he was never known, upon any one occasion,

to exhibit. In brief, my accomplished and long-descended friend intimated to me that it was his intention to sojourn in England so long as there was any prospect of plunder; "after which," said he, "I'm off, like a streak of greased lightning; and the chap that tries to get hold of me will catch an elbow-jar, worse than if he had sniggled an electric eel."

This sort of conversation had for me a peculiar interest, because I could not help seeing that a monetary crisis was impending; and although at that time I had not given much of my attention to questions of political economy, it struck me that the Government, in taking no direct steps towards regulating the movement, had failed to discharge one of its most important duties. I had yet to learn that our statesmen, while avowedly repudiating the doctrines of Machiavelli, can act upon them so far as to encourage popular delusion in order to divert attention from political schemes which otherwise might provoke resistance.

Nothing is more delightful to a man than gaining the ear of a willing listener; and Mr Ewins finding that, like Desdemona, I did "seriously incline" to his talk, proposed that we should dine together. I, nothing loth, assented; and we spent a very pleasant evening. My companion was in high glee, and produced a budget of excellent stories, one of which I shall try to give as nearly as possible in his own language, though no description can convey an adequate idea of the whimsical intonation and droll gestures which accompanied its delivery.

"Wall, Squire," said Mr Ewins, "I've been over all that there country of yours, sir; and I ain't going to deny that I found your folk pretty spry and sharp in their notions. They've a neat way of turning the dollar twice over in the Highlands, that's a fact; and the man that stays long enough at Inverness, at the gunning season in the fall, will find himself pretty much in the predicament of a skinned 'coon. They are

almighty sharp, to be sure, considering the scarcity of breeches' pockets; but there be some of the Lowlanders, too, that ain't soft, I can tell you. I guess there ain't many loafers in Aberdeen. A chap would require to step out pretty smart before he could get ahead of a native of that location; and they are by no means the kind of men that I would fix upon for a deal.

"But if you want to see what rael

smartness is, I guess you must go for it to the States. There's something in the air of the great Free and Independent that polishes up a man like a razor, till he can a'most shave a grizzly bear without the critter knowing it. It ain't edication that does it, and it ain't reason. It's a kinder of instinct, like what naturally sends a young duck into the water. The children have it before they are weaned; and there ain't a boy four years old in Connecticut but knows how many hiccory nuts go to the baker's dozen.

"It's a proud thing, Squire Sinclair, sir, to be a citizen of a country like that a great, free, and glorious nation, where every man keeps his eye skinned, and walks with his wits cocked and primed. I've heard of some sharp things that have been done in this country, more especially of late years; for you Britishers are beginning to take a wrinkle or two from us free Americans-I guess from the smash among your banks that you are becoming alive to the grand system of unlimited credit and universal speculation-but for rael genuine smartness, I calculate, as I said before, that you must go for that to the States. Oh, it raelly makes one feel quite juiced-up like to think how smart our people are!

"The smartest chap by a long chalk that ever I knew was Haman S. Walker, who was raised down country in Virginny. Haman had a bit of a plantation, where he made show of growing cotton; but that wasn't by any means the way that he grew his dollars. He did a good streak of business, I can tell you, in the nigger and horse line, for he was a prime judge of flesh; and once or twice every year he went through the country, picking up bargains and selling again at a profit. He didn't need to look twice at cattle to know their rael value to a cent; and as for cleaning and currying them up for sale, there wasn't the like of him throughout the whole of the confederation. I've known him pass off a sixty-year-old nigger for forty-five, and get the sound price for a brute that was a regular roarer. Haman it was that painted the donkey black and white, and sold it to the

Philadelphia Zoo. Gardens as a zebra.

"Wall, Squire, two years gone by, business was rather slack down by in Virginny. It was one of those oneasy times when folk are timersome to sell, and buyers are as skeary as buffaloes in a clearing. Niggers wouldn't move nohow, and horses were at a nominal quotation. So Haman, who knew as well as most men that time was the Delaware for dollars, moves up a bit to the north, by way of spying if anything could be done thereabouts; for, thinks he, there must be a lot of runaway niggers caved up in these parts, and who knows, if I swear stiff enough, that I mayn't pick up a specimen for nothing? However, he soon found that two could play at that game, for there were a lot of chaps, a'most if not entirely as 'cute as himself, prowling about the prisons, and rapping out affidavits of ownership to every likely nigger as thick as cadoodle bugs in a sugarbarrel. Wall, when Haman saw that no good was to be done among the New-Yorkers (for there are a plaguy lot of onnatural citizens up there that hold shares in the underground railway), he notioned that he would take a cast over the frontier, and try to strike trail in Canada. I expect, however, that he was clean too well roused up to show himself in his own character, for there weren't many loafers in the States that didn't know Haman, and the bare report that he was in the country would have cleared that district of niggers, as fast as the Unitarian congregation disparsed when a skunk got into the chapel. So he first gets hold of a razor and shaves himself as clean of hair as a terrapin (for Haman commonly wore a beard that might have broke the heart of a billy-goat), then he rigs himself out from head to foot like a Methodist parson, with green barnacles, a white choker, a broadbrimmed hat, mits without ends to the fingers, and a genuine sanctified umbrella, such as them critters always carry, with half the whalebone broken. Oh, he was a lovely disciple was Haman! The very sight of him was enough to convert a whole biling