DS IN ANOTHER MIGRATION.

It is the nature of men and boys to run into extremes. I have carried
the reader with me through my desponding and enthusiastic epochs. I now
come to the most miserable of all, my mendacious one. An avowed poet is
entitled, _de jure_, to a good latitude of fiction; but I abused this
privilege most woefully. I became a confirmed and intrepid liar--and
this, too, was the natural course of my education, or the want of it. I
began to read all manner of romances. There was a military and
chivalrous spirit strong in the school--the mania for volunteering was
general, and our numerous school were almost all trained to arms. The
government itself supplied us with a half-dozen drill sergeants to
complete us in our manual and platoon exercises. We had a very pretty
uniform, and our equipments as infantry were complete in all things,
save and excepting that all the muskets of the junior boys had no
touch-holes. Mine was delivered to me in this innocent state. Oh! that
was a great mortification on field-days, when we were allowed to
incorporate with the --- and --- Volunteers, whilst all the big lads
actually fired off real powder, in line with real men, to be obliged to
snap a wooden flint against a sparkless hammer. A mortification I could
not, would not, endure.

There was a regular contention between Mr Root, my musket, and myself;
and at last, by giving my sergeant a shilling, I conquered. Every day
that our muskets were examined on parade, mine would be found with a
touch-hole drilled in it; as certainly as it was found, so certainly was
I hoisted. In that fever of patriotism, I, of all the school, though
denied powder and shot, was the only one that bled for my country.
However, I at length had the supreme felicity of blowing powder in the
face of vacancy, in high defiance of Buonaparte and his assembled
legions on the coast of Boulogne. Thus I had military ardour added to
my other ardencies. Moreover, I had learned to swim in the New River,
and, altogether, began to fancy myself a hero.

I began now to appreciate and to avail myself of the mystery of my
birth. I did not read romances and novels for nothing. So I began my
mendacious career. Oh! the improbable and the impossible lies that I
told, and that were retold, and all believed. I was a prince incognito;
my father had coined money--and I gave my deluded listeners glimpses at
pocket-pieces as proof; if I was doubted I fough