We have minced this epistle, and have contented ourselves with providing a scrap, here and there, to the reader—­despairing, as we utterly do, to gather from memory a full description of a performance so perfectly unique in its singular compound of lofty vein, with the patois and vulgar contractions of his native, and those common to his adopted country.

It proved to his more staid and veteran brother, that Jared was the only one of his family likely to get above his bread and business; but, while he lamented the wanderings and follies of his brother, he could not help enjoying a sentiment of pride as he looked more closely into the matter.  “Who knows,” thought the clockmaker to himself, “but that Jared, who is a monstrous sly fellow, will pick up some southern heiress, with a thousand blackies, and an hundred acres of prime cotton-land to each, and thus ennoble the blood of the Bunces by a rapid ascent, through the various grades of office in a sovereign state, until a seat in Congress—­in the cabinet itself—­receives him;”—­and Ichabod grew more than ever pleased and satisfied with the idea, when he reflected that Jared had all along been held to possess a goodly person, and a very fair development of the parts of speech.  He even ventured to speculate upon the possibility of Jared passing into the White House—­the dawn of that era having already arrived, which left nobody safe from the crowning honors of the republic.

Whether the individual of whom so much was expected, himself entertained any such anticipations or ideas, we do not pretend to say; but, certain it is, that the southern candidate for the popular suffrage could never have taken more pains to extend his acquaintance or to ingratiate himself among the people, than did our worthy friend the pedler.  In the brief time which he had passed in the village after the arrest of Colleton, he had contrived to have something to say or do with almost everybody in it.  He had found a word for his honor the judge; and having once spoken with that dignitary, Bunce was not the man to fail at future recognition.  No distance of manner, no cheerless response, to the modestly urged or moderate suggestion, could prompt him to forego an acquaintance.  With the jurors he had contrived to enjoy a sup of whiskey at the tavern bar-room, and had actually, and with a manner the most adroit, gone deeply into the distribution of an entire packet of steel-pens, one of which he accommodated to a reed, and to the fingers of each of the worthy twelve, who made the panel on that occasion—­taking care, however, to assure them of the value of the gift, by saying, that if he were to sell the article, twenty-five cents each would be his lowest price, and he could scarcely save himself at that.  But this was not all.  Having seriously determined upon abiding at the south, he ventured upon some few of the practices prevailing in that region, and on more than one occasion, a gallon of whiskey had circulated “free gratis,”