g to other people.

Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe,
apart, silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman
was no other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent
periodical entitled "The Asiaeum," which was written to prove that
whatever is popular is necessarily bad,--a valuable and recondite truth,
which "The Asinaeum" had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining
three printers and demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr.
MacGrawler was Scotch by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known
that all periodicals of this country have, from time immemorial, been
monopolized by the gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it
may be the fashion to eat the said cakes in Scotland, but here the good
emigrators seem to like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the
side of the editor stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an
engraving of the "wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of
Mr. Fattem, grazier." To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright
clock in an oaken case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were
fastened in parallels to the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and
cookery were four shelves, containing plates of pewter and delf, and
terminating, centaur-like, in a sort of dresser. At the other side of
these domestic conveniences was a picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet
body and a hat and plume. At the back of the fair hostess stretched the
blanket we have before mentioned. As a relief to the monotonous surface
of this simple screen, various ballads and learned legends were pinned
to the blanket. There might you read in verses, pathetic and unadorned,
how--

"Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!"

There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that--

"Ben the toper loved his bottle,--Charley only loved the lasses!"

When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the "Strange and Wonderful News from