eart to throw aside the thimble, and go forth myself,
to seek glory in battling in the cause of the King."

The youth, whose Christian or 'given' name, as it is even now generally
termed in New-England, had been intended, by his pious sponsors, humbly to
express his future hopes, turned his head towards the heroic tailor, with
an expression of drollery about the eye, that proved nature had not been
niggardly in the gift of humour, however the quality was suppressed by the
restraints of a very peculiar manner, and no less peculiar education.

"There's an opening now, neighbour Homespun, for an ambitious man," he
said, "sin' his Majesty has lost his stoutest general."

"Yes, yes," returned the individual who, either in his youth or in his
age, had made so capital a blunder in the choice of a profession, "a fine
and promising chance it is for one who counts but five-and-twenty; most of
my day has gone by, and I must spend the rest of it here, where you see
me, between buckram and osnaburghs--who put the dye into your cloth,
Pardy? it is the best laid-in bark I've fingered this fall."

"Let the old woman alone for giving the lasting colour to her web; I'll
engage, neighbour Homespun, provided you furnish the proper fit, there'll
not be a better dress'd lad on the island than my own mother's son! But,
sin' you cannot be a general good-man, you'll have the comfort of knowing
there'll be no more fighting without you. Every body agrees the French
won't hold out much longer, and then we must have a peace for want of
enemies."

"So best, so best, boy; for one, who has seen so much of the horrors of
war as I, knows how to put a rational value on the blessings of
tranquillity!"

"Then you ar'n't altogether unacquainted, good-man, with the new trade you
thought of setting up?"

"I! I have been through five long and bloody wars, and I've reason to
thank God that I've gone through them all without a scratch so big as this
needle would make. Five long and bloody, ay, and I may say glorious wars,
have I liv'd through in safety!"

"A perilous time it must have been for you, neighbour. But I don't
remember to have heard of more than two quarrels with the Frenchmen in my
day."

"You are but a boy, compared to one who has seen the end of his third
score of years. Here is this war that is now so likely to be soon
ended--Heaven, which rules all things in wisdom, be praised for the same!
Then there was the business of '45, when the b