"Then sign yer Happy David,” said Jim.

Yates wrote his name, and passed the paper into Jim's hands.

"Now," said Jim, with an expression of triumph on his face, "I s'pose ye don't know that ye've been settin' on a Bible; but it's right under ye, in that chest, and it's hearn and seen the whole thing. If ye don't stand by yer Happy David, there'll be somethin' worse nor Jim Fenton arter ye, an' when that comes ye can jest shet yer eyes and gi'en it up."

This was too much for both Yates and Benedict. They looked into each other's eyes and burst into a laugh. But Jim was in earnest, and not a smile crossed his rough face.

"Now," said he, "I want to do a little sw'arin' myself, and I want ye to write it."

Yates resumed his pen, and declared himself to be in readiness.

"I solem-ny sw'ar," Jim began, "s'welp me! that I will lick Sam Yates-as is a lawyer-with the privlidge of self-defence-if he ever blows on Benedict-as is not a pauper-no more nor Jim Fenton is-an' I solem-ny sw'ar, s'welp me! that I'll foller 'im till I find 'im, an' lick 'im-with the privlidge of self-defence."

Jim would have been glad to work in the last phrase again, but he seemed to have covered the whole ground, and so inquired whether Yates had got it all down.

Yates replied that he had.

"I'm a-goin' to sign that, an' ye can take it along with ye. Swap seats."

Yates rose, and Jim seated himself upon the chest.

"I'm a-goin' to sign this, settin' over the Bible. I ain't goin' to take no advantage on ye. Now we're squar'," said he, as he blazoned the document with his coarse and

clumsy sign-manual. "Put that in yer pocket, an' keep it for five year."

"Is the business all settled?" inquired Yates.

"Clean," replied Jim.

"When am I to have the liberty to go out of the woods?"

"Ye ain't goin' out o' the woods for a fortnight. Ye're a-goin' to stay here, an' have the best fishin' ye ever had in yer life. It'll do ye good, an' ye can go out when yer man comes arter ye. Ye can stay to the raisin,' an' gi'en us a little lift with the other fellers that's comin'. Ye'll be as strong as a hoss when ye go out."

An announcement more welcome than this could not have been made to Sam Yates; and, now that there was no secrecy between them, and confidence was restored, he looked forward to a fortnight of enjoyment. He laid aside his coat, and, as far as possible, reduced his dress to the requirements of camp life. Jim and Mr. Benedict were very busy, so that he was obliged to find his way alone, but Jim lent him his fishing-tackle, and taught him. how to use it; and, as he was an apt pupil, he was soon able to furnish more fish to the camp than could be used.

WHY I LEFT THE ANVIL.

ELIHU BURRITT.

[Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith" of New England, is one of the several instances on record in which determined study has overcome the most discouraging obstacles. In his early life, while working for his bread at the anvil, he pursued the study of language in the intervals of his labor, and by earnest application succeeded in learning numerous tongues. He became widely known for his linguistic acquirements, and applied himself to literature, writing "Sparks from

the Anvil," "Thoughts at Home and Abroad," and several other works. His writings are not very exact in thought and style, yet are written with a degree of enthusiasm, and possess a fair share of merit, if we consider the circumstances of their production. The author was born

in Connecticut in 1810. He died in 1879.]

I SEE it; you would ask me what I have to say for myself for dropping the hammer and taking up the quill, as a member of your profession. I will be honest now, and tell you the whole story. I was transposed from the anvil to the editor's chair by the genius of machinery. Don't smile, friends: it was even so. I had stood and looked for hours on those thoughtless iron intellects, those ironfingered, sober, supple automatons, as they caught up a bale of cotton, and twirled it in the twinkling of an eye into a whirlwind of whizzing shreds, and laid it at my feet in folds of snow-white cloth, ready for the use of our most voluptuous antipodes. They were wonderful things, these looms and spindles ; but they could not spin thoughts; there was no attribute of divinity in them, and I admired them, nothing more. They were excessively curious, but I could estimate the whole compass of their doings and destiny in finger-power: so I came away, and left them spinning-cotton.

One day I was tuning my anvil beneath a hot iron, and busy with the thought that there was as much intellectual philosophy in my hammer as any of the enginery a going in modern times, when a most unearthly screaming pierced my ears. I stepped to the door, and there it was, the great Iron Horse! Yes, he had come, looking for all the world like the great Dragon we read of in Scripture, harnessed to half a living world and just landed on the earth, where he stood braying in surprise and indignation at the "base use" to which he had been turned. I saw the gigantic hexaped move with a power that made

the earth tremble for miles. I saw the army of human beings gliding with the velocity of the wind over the iron track, and droves of cattle travelling in their stables at the rate of twenty miles an hour toward their city slaughter-house. It was wonderful. The little busy-bee machinery of the cotton-factory dwindled into insignificance before it. Monstrous beast of passage and burden! it devoured the intervening distance and welded the cities together! But for its furnace heart and iron sinews it was nothing but a beast, an enormous aggregation of horse-power. And I went back to the forge with unimpaired reverence for the intellectual philosophy of my hammer.

Passing along the street one afternoon, I heard a noise in an old building, as of some one puffing a pair of bellows. So, without more ado, I stepped in, and there, in the corner of a room, I saw the chef-d'œuvre of all the machinery that has ever been invented since the birth of Tubal Cain. In its construction it was as simple and unassuming as a cheese-press. It went with a lever,-with a lever longer, stronger, than that with which Archimedes promised to lift the world.

"It is a printing-press," said a boy standing by the inktrough with a queueless turban of brown paper on his head. "A printing-press!" I queried musingly to myself. "A printing-press? What do you print?" I asked. "Print?" said the boy, staring at me doubtfully: "why, we print thoughts." "Print thoughts?" I slowly repeated after him; and we stood looking at each other in mutual admiration, he in the absence of an idea, I in the pursuit of one. But I looked at him the hardest, and he left another ink-mark on his forehead from a pathetic motion of his left hand to quicken the apprehension of my meaning. "Why, yes," he reiterated, in a tone of

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forced confidence, as if passing an idea which, though having been current a hundred years, might still be counterfeit, for all he could show on the spot, we print thoughts, to be sure." "But, my boy," I asked, in honest soberness, "what are thoughts? and how can you get hold of them to print them?" Thoughts are what come out of people's minds," he replied. "Get hold of them, indeed? Why, minds aren't nothing you can get hold of, nor thoughts either. All the minds that ever thought, and all the thoughts that minds ever made, wouldn't make a ball as big as your fist. Minds, they say, are just like air; you can't see them; they don't make any noise, nor have any color; they don't weigh anything. Bill Deepcut, the sexton, says that a man weighs just as much when his mind has gone out of him as he did before.—No, sir, all the minds that ever lived wouldn't weigh an ounce Troy."

"Then how do you print thoughts?" I asked. "If minds are as thin as air, and thoughts thinner still, and make no noise, and have no substance, shade, or color, and are like the winds, and more than the winds, anywhere in a moment,-sometimes in heaven, sometimes on earth, and the waters under the earth,-how can you get hold of them? how can you see them when caught, or show them to others?"

Ezekiel's eyes grew luminous with a new idea, and, pushing his ink-roller proudly across the metallic page of the newspaper, he replied, "Thoughts work and walk in things that make tracks; and we take them tracks and stamp them on paper, or iron, or wood, or stone, or what This is the way we print thoughts. Don't you

not.

understand?"

The pressman let go the lever and looked interrogatively at Ezekiel, beginning at the patch on his stringless brogans, and following up with his eye to the top of the boy's