gotten; so
that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and no great harm done. And
if he have time, amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take
measures for the renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon's tombstone, which, the
sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite
in twain. She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, in
spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and
her foolish behavior about the coffee; and as she took her departure so
seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone. It is better, at
least, than if she had never needed any! The next item on his list was
to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be
deliverable at his country-seat in the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them,
by all means; and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge
Pyncheon! After this comes something more important. A committee of
his political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars,
in addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall
campaign. The Judge is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on
the November election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth in
another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same
great game. He will do what the committee asks; nay, he will be
liberal beyond their expectations; they shall have a check for five
hundred dollars, and more anon, if it be needed. What next? A decayed
widow, whose husband was Judge Pyncheon's early friend, has laid her
case of destitution before him, in a very moving letter. She and her
fair daughter have scarcely bread to eat. He partly intends to call on
her to-day,--perhaps so--perhaps not,--accordingly as he may happen to
have leisure, and a small bank-note.

Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight on (it is
well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, as respects one's
personal health),--another business, then, was to consult his family
physician. About what, for Heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult
to describe the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of
brain, was it?--or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or
bubbling, in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say?--or was
it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather
creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not
been left out of the Judge's physical contrivance? No matter wha