exerted himself warmly in
promoting his election.

Sterne.--Sterne used to relate a circumstance which happened to him at
York. After preaching at the cathedral, an old woman whom he observed
sitting on the pulpit stairs, stopped him as he came down, and begged to
know where she should have the honour of hearing him preach the following
Sunday. On leaving the pulpit the next Sunday he found her placed as
before, when she put the same question to him. The following Sunday he was
to preach four miles out of York, which he told her; and to his great
surprise, he found her there too, and the same question was put to him as
he descended from the pulpit. "On which," added he "I took for my text
these words, expecting to find my old woman as before: 'I will grant the
request of this poor widow, lest by her often coming, she weary me,'" One
of the company immediately replied, "Why, Sterne, you omitted the most
applicable part of the passage, which is, 'Though I neither fear God nor
regard man.'"

Sporting.--Burton, in his "Anatomie of Melancholy," tells us of a physician
in Milan, who kept a house for the reception of lunatics, and by way of
cure, used to make his patients stand for a length of time in a pit of
water, some up to the knees, some up to the girdle, and others as high as
the chin, according as they were more or less affected. An inmate of this
establishment, who happened, for the time to be pretty well recovered, was
standing at the door of the house, and seeing a gallant cavalier ride past
with a hawk on his fist, and his spaniels after him, asked, "What all these
preparations meant?" The cavalier answered, "To kill game." "What may the
game be worth which you kill in the course of a year?" rejoined the
patient. "About five or ten crowns." "And what may your horse, dogs, and
hawks, cost you for a year?" "Four hundred crowns." On hearing this, the
patient, with great earnestness of manner, bade the cavalier instantly
begone, as he valued his life and welfare; "for" said he, "if our master
come and find you here, he will put you into his pit up to the very chin."

An American heroine.--During the summer of 1787, writes Mr. McClung, in his
Sketches of Western Adventure, "The house of Mr. John Merrill, of Nelson
County, Kentucky, was attacked by the Indians, and defended with singular
address and good fortune. Merrill was alarmed by the barking of a dog about
midnight, and on opening the door in order to ascert