sy details.
My butcher's bill will be due in a few days, and dispatch is desirable.

"With the most cordial compliments to Mrs. Snow, whom I profoundly
esteem, and to your accomplished daughters, who have so long been spared
to the protection of the paternal roof,

"I am your affectionate parishioner,

"ROBERT BELCHER."

Mr. Belcher had done what he considered a very neat and brilliant thing.
He sealed and directed the letter, rang his bell, and ordered it posted.
Then he sat back in his easy chair, and chuckled over it. Then he rose
and paraded himself before his mirror.

"When you get ahead of Robert Belcher, drop us a line. Let it be brief
and to the point. Any information thankfully received. Are you, sir, to
be bothered by this pettifogger? Are you to sit tamely down and be
undermined? Is that your custom? Then, sir, you are a base coward. Who
said coward? Did you, sir? Let this right hand, which I now raise in
air, and clench in awful menace, warn you not to repeat the damning
accusation. Sevenoaks howls, and it is well. Let every man who stands in
my path take warning. I button my coat; I raise my arms; I straighten my
form, and they flee away--flee like the mists of the morning, and over
yonder mountain-top, fade in the far blue sky. And now, my dear sir,
don't make an ass of yourself, but sit down. Thank you, sir. I make you
my obeisance. I retire."

Mr. Belcher's addresses to himself were growing less frequent among the
excitements of new society. He had enough to occupy his mind without
them, and found sufficient competition in the matter of dress to modify
in some degree his vanity of person; but the present occasion was a
stimulating one, and one whose excitements he could not share with
another.

His missive went to its destination, and performed a thoroughly
healthful work, because it destroyed all hope of any relief from his
hands, and betrayed the cruel contempt with which he regarded his old
townsmen and friends.

He slept as soundly that night as if he had been an innocent infant; but
on the following morning, sipping leisurely and luxuriously at his
coffee, and glancing over the pages of his favorite newspaper, he
discovered a letter with startling headings, which displayed his own
name and bore the date of Sevenoaks. The "R" at its foot revealed Dr.
Radcliffe as the writer, and the peppery doctor had not miscalculated in
deciding that "The New York Tattler" would be the paper most affected