no verses. steamboat, when Orinda opened her Album to look for the inspirations of Jenkins's Muse. She found But on the very page consecrated by the hand of La Fayette, and immediately under the autograph of the hero, was written, in an awkward school-boy character, the name of Jeremiah Jenkins. G THE READING PARTIES. WRITTEN ORIGINALLY FOR "THE TOKEN," 1835. MR. MILSTEAD, a clergyman, who to the most sincere piety united a cultivated mind, a benevolent heart, and a cheerful and liberal disposition, had been recently appointed to a church in one of the small towns of a certain Atlantic section of the Union, that shall be nameless. His wife was a young and beautiful woman, whose character harmonized in every respect with his own. They had no children; they were good managers, and Mr. Milstead soon found that his salary would not only afford them all they wanted, but that it would leave them something to give away. They became very popular with the congregation; for Mr. Milstead, though indefatigable in administering to the spiritual wants of his flock, was never unmindful of their temporal happiness, and his judicious and amiable wife went hand in hand with him in every thing. They had not been long established in Tamerton, when Mr. and Mrs. Milstead observed with regret, that though the inhabitants showed the best possible disposition to be on intimate terms with the minister and his lady, there was little sociability or familiarity among themselves. The society of Tamerton had gradually divided into numerous circles; some of these eircles being so small as to comprise but one or two families. For instance, Mrs. Gutheridge, the most wealthy woman of the place, revolved entirely in her own orbit. She was the childless widow of Zephaniah Pelatiah Gutheridge, who had for several successive sessions filled the office of speaker, in the senate of the state legislature: an office that suited him exactly, as he had never been known to speak in the house, and very rarely out of it. Mr. Gutheridge had long been the chief man of Tamerton, and his widow now reigned in his stead: alone in her glory, and occupant of the broadest, the longest, and the tallest white frame domicile in the village. She was originally from the city, and of a very genteel family: her grandfather having made his fortune, quitted bricklaying, and turned gentleman long before he was superannuated. Her father had not contaminated his hands by putting them to any trade whatever: having, after he left college, attended to no other business than the care of preserving his life by studying to guard himself from all possible maladies and accidents. Therefore he died of no particular disease, at the age of thirty-four. Mrs. Gutheridge was a large woman, with a majestic figure. She had an aquiline nose, immense black eyes, and a prominent mouth, with very good teeth. After she became a widow, she preferred remaining at Tamerton to removing to the city: for, like Cæsar, she thought it better to be first in a village than second at Rome. She had, however, a sovereign contempt for every man, woman and child in the neighbourhood, with the exception of the clergyman and his wife, whom she tolerated, because she had heard that, in England, the aristocracy make a point of upholding the church, and she professed to be aristocratic in all her ways. With the assistance of her maid, she spent an hour every day in attiring herself for her solitary dinner, and she sat down alone to her sumptuous table, "all drest up in rich array." This she call |