vessel filled with fused and seething metal, fresh from the furnace. He was horribly burned; but strength and obstinacy saved his life, and at the time I saw him, he had survived the accident thirty years, and was able to walk a few steps, totteringly, and holding by the wall. Above the knees, he was strong, but rather shaky-tyrannical and fierce as a bashaw-and not over-scrupulous, it was said, in religion or honesty-smoked a pipe, or bad segars, incessantly, and owing to the entire loss of his teeth, and a nervous perversity of jaw, was wholly unintelligible in conversation. He had a young and pretty wife (the Turk!), whose duty it was, to stand ready at any instant to rub his withered and cranky old limbs, in case of a twinge, and also to cook, scrub, make beds, mend clothes, and do the washing, for the entire household. In return for which services, she received grudging permission to eat and sleep, as much as consisted with the interests of the establishment, and the aches and humors of her lord. Gratitude and affection, as absurd, and weak, and imaginative, were not of that sphere; but, in some emergencies, it was supposable that the woman might want clothes-in which case, she was privileged to do extra work to pay for them! which she did-as I know of my own personal knowledge.

A veritable patriarchal despot, was that seared and superannuated cart-boy. All day long, in the corner by the stove, with his hat on-jauntily on-as in pertinacious defiance of his own impotence -a permanent smoke-cloud enveloping him, and his fierce black eyes gleaming through it-there he sat, watching the manoeuvres of his "woman," and growling and snarling querulously in unknown tongues, for all the world (barring the hat) like a grisly bear in a fog.

But, in providing for the stomachs of his guests, the old fellow was by no means illiberal. His charges were moderate. For bed, bedding, and ediblesmeals being provided for the miners at any hour of the night (think of that poor woman again !)—I am really ashamed to write it down: per head-Eight Dollars a Month. I am not certain but I might conscientiously recommend the "Mine Holes," as a cheap summer re

sort.

The fare was in no way despicable, and was always abundant. Salted fat pork, molasses and Indian meal were the chief ingredients, but potatoes were not unfre

quent; dried beef and cabbages were furnished once a week, and at favorable seasons, fresh meat twice a month, and oftener. Besides which, pies of a thoroughly indigestible nature, and applebutter, were the adjuncts of every meal. Considering that all these things (except the adjuncts) were brought to the door from foreign parts, by itinerant provision merchants, I was not surprised when the bear informed me, confidentially, and by an interpreter, that no morey was to be made at tavern-keeping, in that neighborhood.

I have said there were three modes of living. The third was adopted by old settlers, amateur miners, whose birthplace and homes were in the land-in a village distant two miles, and another village distant three miles, and in Dutch farm-houses about them. But these settlements being, in the winter season, as one might say, separated from the mine by roads entirely impracticable, except to one, as it were, "brought up" to them, there were left for me but two alternatives of residence.

I was plunged in a quagmire of doubt. I had sought barbarism, but my idea of it had been of a mild and somewhat modified cast. I had not longed for the absolute feudalism of Moscow, or for the peculiar savageress of Kamtschatka, as here exemplified (description above) on the one hand, by huts of the Arctics, and on the other, by castle of the bear.

While floundering in this perplexity, I blundered into the office of the mining agent or manager. The edifice yclept "office" was a cabin one story high, of boards roughly nailed together, which I had at first mistaken for a smith-shop, containing two apartments, a coal-stove and a fire-place, besides several tables and chairs of pine, built by the carpenter, and in one room a sleeping bunk, likewise made by the carpenter and likewise of pine, with a bag of straw upon it and a buffalo skin spread comfortably over that (that is Mr. De Quincey's "that," but he will never know it) cosily set down opposite a roaring fire, and within scorching distance, the apartment being six feet wide, and the bunk three.

There was a blazing comfort about this superior to anything I was familiar with, short of a blast-furnace; and ascertaining, after an interview with the agent, that the particular bunk in question was his (the agent's) individual property, and sacred to his own mighty per son, and finding him rather an agreeable

savage than otherwise, I proposed that he should furnish me an analogous couch, with similar accoutrements, in the chamber or cell adjoining, athwart the store. He was struck by the feasibility of the proposition, and issued his orders accordingly; and that night saw me wrapped in my buffalo-at my back a cold wind, from the unstopped cracks in the unplastered walls, and before me a large stove, at red heat, distant two paces. I was obliged to turn myself often, for fear of being underdone on one side. The satisfaction of emulating a backwoodsman was enhanced and made intense by the reflection, that Philadelphia and the Girard House were within a three hours' ride. Sooth to say, the only drawback to perfect happiness in the existing arrangement was, that there was nothing to eat on our side the "Holes," and that it thus became necessary to patronize the boarding-house at meal times.

The crossing of those slippery places was no small item, especially after dark, and in a storm. For the first few nights I adventured it with fear and trembling. The ground was haunted, and I was instructed to expect shrieks and all sorts of bloody and intangible spectres. The road pitching with a steep descent into the very heart of the gloomy hollow, and then winding and twisting about, under crags that seemed ready to fall, and along pits that reminded you of the bottomless, leading suddenly down to the edge of water, you knew not how dangerous, and then up again, steep and stumbling, mud all the while, literally more than ankle deep it required courage and strength, and a good share of philosophy, to carry a man through it of a stormy night, even with a lantern. However, I made light of it, as well as I could, and very soon fell into the ways of the place (figuratively if you please), and was naturalized in due course.

Before that time, I had never seen practical democracy; but in Berks County I found it rampant. There, every man is as good as his rich neighbor, and holds it for an inalienable right to call him Tom or Sam, as the case may be, and never to mister him, except on occasions of great ceremony, when the compliment is reciprocal. To a stranger this levelling system is very striking, even in the city of Reading, although I have been told it is only a deceitful appearance.

In point of fact, I was led to remark (as a stranger) that Reading, over and above other machine shops (for they deal

in iron there, and make many locomotives and such like knick-knacks) is remarkable for three things. In that the people converse promiscuously in two languages-to wit, English and Pennsylvania Dutch. In that everybody drinks spirituous drinks with a regularity and a capacity perfectly amazing (I never saw it equalled in any community except among the Congress-men at Washington), and in that, in the outside intercourse of the men there is no aristocracy. I have seen them assemble at luncheon time in the bar-room of the principal hotel: Tinkers and bankers, petty shopkeepers, machinists and great iron-masters, engineers and railroad directors, drinking and clinking their glasses together in perfect jovial unanimity, soot and dandyism in contact, uncontaminated.

But the perfection of the system was at the "Holes." We were brethren; children of one ancestor. It was an admirable joke, and jumped with my own humor completely. I became familiar with the whim-boy, and on intimate terms with the hostler. I learned to drive a cart, to "mind the engine," and "tend the magnets," and fill the copper bags, and weigh the ore, and hold the can for blasting-and was soon rather popular, and decidedly unfit to be seen.

I went to their meetings of a Sunday. There was a small Baptist meetinghouse not quite a mile from the mine, close beside a spring that answered for the "dipping place," as they called it. Good people came here from a considerable distance, and the very froth and scum of the carth from the immediate neighborhood. The ceremonies were conducted, after their sort, with perfect decorum; except that the "Mine Holes" hands, by way of avoiding the fatigue of a too long sitting, would preposterously go out and come in, a half dozen together, many times through the service. There were no hymn books in visible use, but a certain set of hymns, learned by heart, were chanted Sunday after Sunday.

The preacher was a phenomenon: a good singer, and vain in proportion; with the strangest imaginable disregard of pulpit proprieties. He would set off without any warning, and at the top of his voice, to sing the favorite hymn"I want to go;" and while carrying on the music in a continuous bawl, would open the Bible; find a text; slap the book shut with a crash; throw himself back in his chair; spring up again;

come down the pulpit steps; march back and forth along the aisles, rubbing and clapping his hands, and taking a minute inventory of the congregation: with every change of position, his lungs growing more vigorous and stentorian. I have even seen him go to the stove and replenish it with fuel: and at that point his voice reached the climacteric of vehemence. He yelled

"I want to go!

I want to go!

I want to go there too!

I want to go where Jacob is!
I want to go there too!"

This display of personal activity was a pleasant excitement for the audience. Their eyes followed the preacher's evolutions with great interest, and every tongue shouted in deafening chorus

"I w-a-n-t to go-there-too !"

The sermon was of miner consideration, and we will not trouble ourselves about that. It will be evident that their religion was chiefly musical; owing, as I said, to the peculiar bent of the clerical mind. But the efficacy of it may be doubted. The next day, as you passed the "Mine Holes," you would hear the cart boys (blasphemous wretches) shouting to their teams with the dreadfullest curses that ever offended delicate ears, and interspersing with their oaths little snatches of the Sunday music, as thus"I want to go where Jacob is;"

Or thus

"If you get there before I do, Tell them I'm a-coming too."

Or thus

"Come with us,

Come with us,

Come with us in love," &c., &c.

But, be it known, that they sung these sacred hymns, not in ridicule, but as our loafers rehearse the melodies of Christy; from the mere love of song.

Yet were they a wild people; an unholy throng; and when the novelty of such associations wore away, I began to withdraw from their communion. I became assiduously chemical and mineralogical. I diligently scoured the neighboring hills, and, with a sagacity worthy of presidential imitation, filled my binet" with innocuous quartz and pudding-stone. It was stated, in my hearing, that at the end of a single week, I had probably collected more flint, and

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jasper, and conglomerate, than any other existing naturalist.

In assaying, my success was, to say the least, encouraging. The " professor," a little Scotchman of transcendent genius, could never bring the ore to a higher value than twelve per cent. My specimens frequently reached a much higher figure; and, on one occasion, if I mistake not, I obtained twenty-two per cent. of pure metal (?) from a sample which the "professor" reported to be worth but 10.5. Convinced that I was destined to become a luminary of science, and that I was even at that moment nebulous, I sent to New York for a complete set of apparatus and chemicals, appropriated an unoccupied shed, and established a laboratory. I succeeded in making two jars of hydrogen gas from iron filings. I had the professor, for an audience, and experimented; but I believe it was poor gas-it would not burn. Turning my attention to oxygen, however, I rose with effulgence to the zenith; and pursued a brilliant, phosphorescent, and sulphureous career, for some days; the "professor" and length I had a visitor from New York; one darkey being witness. and while generating a fresh supply of the gas, by heating chlorate of potassa in a test-tube, my friend held the tube over a spirit lamp, and, contrary to all rule and precedent, the spiteful thing exploded in his eye. That was enough for me. I shut up shop: and foreswore Stöckhardt, and Liebig, and Brande, and Berzelius, in toto, and to the end of time.

an

At

This mode of life was fast becoming insipid. There was nothing left to do, unless to hire myself out permanently as "underground helper:" verily, an occupation introduced from Pandemonium, and which I should have been slow to recommend to my bitterest foe. Come and see what it was.

Here is the mouth of the shaft, with two modes of descent into it: one, by the iron bucket (or "kibble") attached to the whim-rope, which is seldom resorted to; the other, by a narrow perpendicular ladder, partitioned off from the main shaft, and reserved exclusively for passengers. This ladder is divided into sections of thirty feet, with platforms between for rest, and for safety in case of a fall. The opening in each platform at the top of a section of ladder, is called a 66 man-hole."

Moisture from the walls and clay from

many muddy feet, make the ladder slippery and of uncertain footing; so that the novice must possess a firm grip and good nerve, to carry him safely down.

Supposing you courageous and firm, we will invest you with the miner's livery, and whistle you off the surface into the depths and mysteries of this craft. The livery is of a dun color; consisting of overalls that will not show dirt (being already saturated therewith); a skull-cap, and over it the indispensable hat with a round top: weight six pounds, rim narrow and strong; the whole capable of resisting the blow of a small sledge hammer, or the fall of a moderate sized rock, and surmounted in front by a lighted candle, stuck in a lump of clay, which adheres to the hat of its own accord, after being once put there. Accoutered in this queer fashion, and with a guide dressed in the same style, you step into the great dark well and begin to descend.

You at once lose the light of day, which is shut out by a trap-door at the well's mouth; and as you get down lower and lower, the narrow walls seem to be closing upon you; and the trickling of water, and the stepping of the old miner, and the jarring of the iron pump, sound ghostly and strange; and fantastic shadows, cast by your stump of a candle, flicker and vanish upon the walls like horrible phantoms. Now your hands slip upon the slimy rounds of the ladder, and your eyes grow dim! Frightful thoughts of a false step, or a broken round, creep over you, and of being hurled backwards into the awful shaft, and of getting mangled and crushed, and of having your brains dashed out against the rock, and of being gathered up, dead, by hard and cruel men, and hoisted to daylight again, in the kibble, tied in with ropes-and then sent home at last, all disfigured and unrecognizable, in a coffin! Thus you come to the first platform.

You are bold once more, with your feet on the firm rafters, and the old miner beside you. Holding your candle to the walls, you watch the little streams of water, and wonder at the massive timbers, and listen, without flinching, to the great pump, held together and fastened in its place with iron bands. Then you go down the next thirty feet, accustomed to the darkness and gaining strength at every step-and in this way, quite bravely to the bottom.

Here is a miniature world, all in the

dark; full of winding ways, and traps for the unwary, and business, and railroads! Low arched passages, that a tall man must stoop to walk in, cut through solid rock and clay and sliding earth, and carefully supported with heavy timbers but a few feet apart! The extent of these, only appreciable by the twinkling and waving and dancing about of the miner's candles, that seem like so many Will-o-the-wisps in the distance, and by the clicking of picks and hammers, that have a muffled and far-off sound!

Suddenly, a rumbling and trembling of the earth, and cries of "clear the way!" and a hand-car comes rolling along, pushed by two shadows, with a sort of glory about their heads, which is only a candle gleaming through the damp. The car is emptied quickly at the shaft, and whirled away again. It was a good deal like an earthquake, or something of that sort.

You follow your guide through the numerous passages, with the candle upon your hat; slipping about on the irregular floors, stumbling over the rails, and sousing into unexpected puddles; now creeping on all fours through a neglected" drift," where the earth has fallen in and obstructed the way, and where you run imminent risk of being covered up by another slide, and never heard of afterwards; and now coming to the orink of a forsaken shaft, so full of water that you are scarcely held back from stepping into it, taking it for another puddle. You have had enough of such travels; and are seized with an oppressed and choking sensation, as if a coroner's jury were sitting on you; and so stand still for a while, to take breath and watch the miners at work.

There is nothing peculiarly cheerful and soothing in this prospect. You grow yet more dizzy and uncomfortable, to see those moles, steadily undermining the hundred feet of earth above them; picking their way into the rocks, a very few inches at a time; propping the uncertain roof with splinters; and in danger, any moment, of a summary and terrible suffocation.

As you listen to their ejaculations and rough jests, and blasphemies, you discover that the danger is never out of their thoughts an instant; that they are watching for it, and joking and swearing about it, and afraid of it, and reckless, in a breath.

Your guide laughs, and says they are

a "hard set;" and goes on, quite volubly, to tell of their pranks-how "the boys" (so he calls them) make merry with death: how they chase each other playfully on the shaft-ladder, without a light; skipping the rounds; and often swinging down hand over hand, with their feet in the air. It was on such a savage race as this (he tells you), that only a few months ago, one of them, a lad of seventeen, missed his hold and fell. The platform would have saved him; but falling across the shaft, he plunged headlong down the ladderway, and straight to the bottom-near sixty feet.

His companions crept out of the shaft with pale faces and shaking knees, and dared not go back again after they had lighted their candles. But other men went down and found the lad insensible, although there was life in him yet, with his ribs broken and his skull shockingly splintered. They prepared bandages and tackling, and brought him up to the surface, slowly and painfully.

They called a skillful surgeon to dress his wounds, who said he feared the poor creature would never hold up his shattered and bruised and shapeless head again. So they almost gave him up in despair, only his old father nursed him and kept a brave heart.

But what sound is this that breaks upon the monotonous click of tools and the hum of the miner's story? A distant roar, as if the subterranean waters were breaking up, or the suspended earth loosening from its anchorage! The workmen listen a moment, then drop their tools, and rush pell-mell for the shaft. Now assuredly is the caving in of this wickedness.

You shut your eyes in a paroxysm of fear, that you may not see the rocks falling together; and at once bethink you how unpleasant it is to be buried in this fashion, confounded by your livery with such unutterably vulgar company.

But your guide twitches you by the sleeve, and says they are going to set off a blast, and you had better be out of the way. Still that noise! reverberating along the low roofs of the corri

dors, and striking a chill to your heart again. You reach the ladder, and clutching the rounds with a desperate grasp, mount up for dear life, a vision haunting you the while of a poor miner-boy, bloody and mangled, lying in the bottom of the shaft. The strange roar now grows deafening, and fills the great pit from top to bottom, like the escape of steam from a hundred boilers.

Toward the end of the toilsome climbing it increases more and more, and as you spring out, at last, into the free open air, and toss up your hat, candle and all, at the sun, with a hearty and joyful shout-there, right before you, is the enormous whistle of the engine, in full blast, bellowing as if it would tear off the roof of the firmament. Presently it stops; and they tell you it was to call away the miners from their eight hours "shift," and replace them by another set for a new eight hours.

Then there is a dull concussion in the earth, and a dense column of smoke comes curling out of the shaft, with a strong smell of exploded gunpowder.

The same veteran digger who has stood your guide from the first, is beside you again, and pointing to a stout impudent rascal who is snapping a long cartwhip and singing comic psalms, says, "That's Tommy Mum, sir, the lad that fell in the shaft and broke his head-it's hard killing your true Cornishman, sir."

With inward thanksgiving that you were not born of that nobility, you call for your "tablets," and write (as beyond a doubt, in the like case, Hamlet would have written): "Mem. To sell, 'North Carolina' at any price. N. B.-Never to buy another share of any copper stock while the world stands."

But enough. Tired of a citizenship among the "unwashed," and of minerals and test-tubes, and especially of "whims," hankering, moreover after the flesh-pots of Delmonico, I chartered a coal-team, and surrendering myself to the luxury of six horses, a commodious vehicle, and a gently undulating road, was slowly "hauled" and jolted away from the "Mine Holes" for ever-I and

my trunk. "Alas, poor Warwick!"