"Sell it?" said I.
"Sure," said Michael, with a grin; "we are making money, your ladyship; we shall be afther moving out of this cellar before long, and away from the likes of them," (pointing in the direction of the curtain); "and, savin' your ladyship's presence," said he, running his fingers through his mop of wiry hair, "Irish people sometimes understhand dhriving a thrade as well as Yankees;" and Michael drew himself up as though General Washington couldn't be named on the same day with him.
Just then a little snarly headed boy came in with two pennies and a cracked plate, "to buy some butther."
"Didn't I tell your ladyship so?" said Michael. "Holy Mother!" he continued, as he pocketed the pennies, and gave the boy a short allowance of the vile stuff, "how I wish I had known how to make that butther when every bone in me body used to ache sawin' wood, and the likes o' that,—to say nothing of the greater respictability of being in the mercantile profession."
Well, well, thought I, as I traveled home, this is high life under ground, in New-York.
[ "BALD EAGLE;"
OR,
THE LITTLE CAPTIVES. ]
Do you like Indians? Our forefathers didn't admire them much. They had seen too many scalps hanging at their belts, and had heard their war whoops rather too often, to fancy such troublesome neighbors. They never felt as if they were safe, and wouldn't have thought ever of going to meeting without a loaded musket. I suppose that's the way the fashion originated for men to sit at the bottom of the pews, and women and children up at the other end. The men wanted to get on their feet quickly if a posse of Indians yelled at the door. Ah! men were men, then, from the tips of their noses to their shoe-ties; they didn't wear plaid pants, and use perfume and Macassar, as they do now-a-days.
And the women, too! they were not ashamed to be seen in calico dresses, and did not go about the country making orations and wearing dickeys. I had rather see an Indian, any time, than such a woman.
Sometimes the men were obliged to go away from home, and then they left a loaded gun where their wives could use it, in case the Indians came while they were absent. The Indians are very cunning. They used to watch their chance; and often, when a man came back to his home, he would find it a pile of smoking ruins, and his wife and children killed, or, what was worse, carried away captives.