INSURANCE IN GOSPELER's GULCH.
The Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON (OCTAVIUS, because there had been seven other little SIMPSONS, who all took after their father when he died of mumps, like seven kittens after the parental tail,) having thrown himself all over the room with a pair of dumb-bells much too strong for him, and taken a seidlitz powder to oblige his dyspepsia, was now parting his back hair before a looking-glass. An unimpeachably consumptive style of clerical beauty did the mirror reflect; the countenance contracting to an expression of almost malevolent piety when the comb went over a bump, and relaxing to an open-mouthed charity for all mankind, amounting nearly to imbecility, when the more complex requirements of the parting process compelled twists of the head scarcely compatible with even so much as a squint at the glass.
It being breakfast time, Mrs. SIMPSON—mother of OCTAVIUS—was just down for the meal, and surveyed the operation with a look of undisguised anxiety.
"You'll break one of them yet, some morning, OCTAVE," said the old lady.
"Do what, OLDY?" asked the writhing Gospeler, apparently speaking out of his right ear.
"You'll break either the comb, or your neck, some morning."
Rendered momentarily irritable by this aggravating remark, the Reverend OCTAVIUS made a jab with the comb at the old lady's false-front, pulling it down quite askew over her left eye; but, upon the sudden entrance of a servant with the tea-pot, he made precipitate pretence that his hand was upon his mother's head to give her a morning blessing.
They were a striking pair to sit at breakfast together in Gospeler's Gulch, Bumsteadville: she with her superb old nut-cracker countenance, and he with the dyspepsia of more than thirty summers causing him to deal gently with the fish-balls. They sat within sound of the bell of the Ritualistic Church, the ringing of which was forever deluding the peasantry of the surrounding country into the idea that they could certainly hear their missing cows at last (hence the name of the church—Saint Cow's); while the sonorous hee-hawing of an occasional Nature's Congressman in some distant field reminded them of the outer political world.
"Here is Mr. SCHENCK'S letter," said Mrs. SIMPSON, handing an open epistle across the table, as she spoke to her son, "and you might read it aloud, my OCTAVE."
Taking the tea-cup off his face, the Reverend OCTAVIUS accepted the missive, which was written from "A Perfect Stranger's Parlor, New York," and began reading thus: "Dear Ma-a-dam—