the establishment, and part of whom paid a small sum on entering, and were lodged in a better manner. The funds, being vested in public securities, partook of the general reduction which they sustained under the government of the French, and thus proved insufficient to continue the institution on its old footing. The inmates were removed to other establishments, and the buildings are now used as a place of instruction for indigent children, and for the meetings of a society whose object is to give employment to the poor. The Vrouwenhuis, or Woman's House, conducted on the same principles with the Oudemannenbuis, still subsists. The Proveniershuis is devoted to the purpose of lodging aged persons, but only those who are boarded and lodged for life, in consideration of their having paid a certain sum at entering the establishment; and it now contains many of the former occupants of the Oudemannenhuis. Beside these foundations, are several made entirely by benevolent individuals, of which that of Gerrit de Koker may serve as an example. It was finished in 1786, and is situated on the Singel, between the Rotte and the Goudsche Weg. It consists of a large edifice, surrounding a court, where a certain number of aged widows, or unmarried females, are lodged gratis, who are also allowed the aid of physicians and nurses, and receive a small monthly allowance in money. These various establishments afford a refuge to a large number of aged persons, who, without being absolutely paupers, may have outlived their connexions, and become reduced in circumstances, and here gain the quiet and security of the convent, without being obliged to assume the forms and restraints of any particular sect of christianity. The institution exists in other parts of Europe, and deserves to be introduced into the United States, among other objects of benevolence, on which the wealth of our citizens is so freely bestowed. Rotterdam also possesses its Dolhuis, or Asylum for Lunatics; its Gasthuis, or Public Hospital; its Arinenhuis, or Alms House; its Spinhuis, or House of Correction ; with many other establishments, of the like nature, which do not call for particular remark. In leaving Rotterdam for Delft, I adopted the then ordinary and

I most convenient mode of making the journey, by the trekschuyt, or canal boat. To reach the boat, you pass through the gate called Delftsche-poort, a building decorated with columns and sculptures, which is much praised by the inhabitants of the city; and near which is what is called the Hofpoort, a gate surmounted by a fine column, and bearing two lions recumbent at the base of the column, all of considerable beauty. Here, near the point where the Rotte enters the city, I embarked upon the canal of Schie, and bade adieu, for the present, to Rotterdam.

STANZAS.

TO A ROSE, BLOSSOMING WITHIN THE ENCLOSURE OF THE STATE'S PRISON, CHARLESTOWN, MASS.

OR THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO.'

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

NEXT to being harassed by duns, run down by constables, and taken up by the gout, I do believe the man who has nothing to do,' leads about the most vagabond sort of a life ever allotted by Providence to any thing in the shape of a man. I believe this to be a rule without an exception; a law without the glorious uncertainty of the law. Your man of fashion is a man of business; always busy in his line. His lacquies, his tailors, his stables, and his debts, furnish him with a place, and constant employment,' independent of every thing else. Your vagabond has his occupation, his trade, his standing in society. He falls into his place as scientifically as a corn-stalk militia-man, at a regimental review, and goes through all the evolutions of his craft. The strolling beggar carries a sick child, or a greasy piece of parchment from a corporation officer, with a long tale at the end of it, or grinds on a squeaking hand-organ, or plays a fiddle to a dancing baboon. These worthy people all have something to do. You can understand what they were made for. The world would n't have all sorts of people in it, without them.

Well, the point to which I am coming, is this. I once knew a man who had nothing to do. He was the circumstance of an accident and a result. A mere 'circumstance,' for he was about as near nothing

a

a man

a

a

a

a

as nobody; of an accident,' for a rich old uncle left him a fortune, through forgetfulness to make a will, and leave it to his house-keeper, as he had promised; and a result,' for it neither turned his head, nor changed his disposition; it established him, my old friend Jeremiah Lincoln, for that was his name, in the indomitable resolution to be 'a gentleman.' And he bad but one definition of that word; who has nothing to do.' He did n't fish it out of Doctor Johnson; he was his own lexicographer.

This resolution had been formed after mature reflection. It came about in this way. Jeremiah had been overworked when he was a boy. His mother sent him to school to one Stofle Peeler, a big, brawny Dutchman. I knew him well, and he was a 'peeler. The school-house was away off at the cross roads, a mile and a half from our village, in a little clamp of a buttonwood grove, interspersed with birch sprigs, originally, though they were being thinned out in our time; and it was a tiresome walk, for a lad who carried a half-conned lesson in one side of his head, and a well-conned idea of the quality of the birch sprigs, in the other side. Jeremiah always said it was too much for him; between the mother and the master, he would absolutely be worked to death ; and this unhappy result might have actually come about, but for the lucky circumstance I am now to relate, which fortunately dropped in, and not only preserved his valuable life, but secured to the world the materials of this instructive story.

It was this. Our worthy school-master, among other sapient inventions for teaching the young idea how to shoot, had a rule, that the spelling-class should, every Monday morning, reverse its order from head to tail; the lads took each other down, as they caught the missed words, through the week, and on Saturday, the boy who stood head, took home a certificate of approbation in his pocket, and the unlucky urchin who stood tail, was furnished with a contra certificate on his back. The word, one Saturday, was ‘Seringapatam. It took Jerry to the landing-place at the foot, and he went home 'a striped pig.' But that was not all. Master Peeler, for he was a genius in his line, gave poor Jerry the consolatory piece of information, at parting, that unless he spelled that word on Monday morning, syllable by syllable, putting it together as he went along, he should have another waking up,' that would be a caution to him all the days of his life.

Faithfully did Jerry strive to master that hard-mouthed word; to him, it was a regular-built jaw-breaker. He could n't twist his tongue round it, no how.' He spelled it over a hundred times ; he dreamed about it at night; he turned it over, took it apart, and tried it and tried it, until its tingling sound rang in his ears like forty sleigh-bells; and when Monday morning came, he sat by the fire, with his spellingbook before him, the very picture of despair. That word was his Shibboleth. The school hour was approaching; and, with the sensations of a culprit going to the gallows, he buckled his strap around the ook, slung it over his should and flung himself out of the door. As he tracked his way toward the scene of his anticipated ignominy, the fresh and clear breeze of the morning seemed to rëinvigorate his mind. His meditations took another turn. • I wonder,' said he to himself, 'what use there is in going to school for ever?'

6

6

6

a

What good will it do me to be banged and banged about, like a dog? I wish I was a gentleman! I wish I had nothing to do! Master Peeler is a great rascal. He would n't knock me about so, if I was a man. I'll not go to school, to be hammered in this way;' and his wrath rising with his recapitulated wrongs, he clenched his fists, and broke out aloud, 'I'll be hanged if I do!'

'If you do what?' said a stern voice, behind him.

He looked around, and there was master Peeler at his heels! Not recollecting, at the moment, that all his cogitations, except the last expression, had been confined to himself, and seized with the belief that all the disrespectful thoughts which had been so vividly present to his mind, had been uttered in the ear of the dreaded form whose frown chilled his blood, he uttered one shriek of terror, flung away his book, and taking to his heels, never looked behind him, until he had bolted in at his mother's door, and slammed it at his back. 'Mother,' said he, to the astonished old lady, Mother, I'll be darned if I'm going to be licked ag'in, for all the Seringatangtangs in the book! I won't never go to school no more! I won't- I won't!'

The argument that ensued is of no consequence here. The fact is, Jeremiah Lincoln's literary labors terminated at 'Seringapatam.' The next time I saw him, was in a stuffed and cushioned chair, in the back room of a quiet house, in a retired part of the city. Three years had gone by, and the men and things of the world, like the beads in a kaleidoscope, had assumed, after the successful casts of time, new combinations of shape and coloring. Jerry was enjoying the comforts of three thousand dollars a year; had sunk into the repose of perfect retirement; had reached what he conceived to be the summit of earthly felicity; and even the village school-master had been forgotten, or at least forgiven.

The docile spirit of the boy, which never, except on the one memorable occasion, already alluded to, had risen to fever heat, now slept behind the mirror of his blue eye, as calm and serene as the clear sky in a quiet lake. He never opened a book—they were tiresome; nor a newspaper- they were exciting. He walked around the square, when an umbrella was not necessary, or took an afternoon airing with Tom, in a Tilbury, and a 'family horse.' But in process of time, the sights' in his neighborhood became old; the faces he was accustomed to see, familiar; he had told all he knew to every body with whom he was acquainted, and a little enlargement of his sphere of action became perceptible. He strayed one day to the site of a new building, some squares off; and while amusing himself by looking at the hod-men carrying their burdens up the long ladders, a brick fell upon his head. Whatever there was within, however, was so well protected, that the uncivil salutation produced no very alarming consequences. He was picked up, set on his feet, the blood and dirt wiped away, a patch applied to the wound; and to the kind inquiry, what the Harry he was about standing there, right in the way,' his unsophisticated answer was, he had nothing

else to do.'

This little incident might have been of service to him, if he had had any employment at home. But that being out of the question, he was soon abroad again; and the next time I saw him, he wore an

air of sullen disquietude. He had been shamefully, shockingly illtreated. What do you think? said he; I stepped aboard a steamboat at the wharf, yesterday; I was looking through her — I had nothing else to do, you know - and before I was aware, I found we were travelling up the North River! I could n't think of going from home. I had no money no clothes knew no body; and when I politely asked them to put me ashore, and let me go home, they told me I might mind my own concerns, and that I had no business to be on board, if I was n't going to Albany! But that's not all,' said he, looking cautiously around, to see if any body could hear; 'they actually sent me on shore, in a little boat, ten miles off, because I could not pay my passage; and I begged my way down in a truck-cart.' I expressed my sympathy. And yet,' continued he, 'when I went to the police office, to complain of this kind of treatment, stealing me away from my home and friends in this way, they actually laughed at me, and said as much as that it served me about right; and that, as I had nothing else to do,' I might as well be riding ten miles out in a steam-boat, and ten back in a truck-cart, as not; they didn't see as it made any difference!'

I consoled the poor fellow as well as I could, and we parted.

It was but a few days afterward, that Jerry's man Tom came to me, in great perturbation, and told me that his master had been missing all night, and that he had accidentally found him in the policeoffice, where he then was, charged with some offence; and he begged me to come down and see what was the matter. I went. Just as I had succeeded in elbowing my way through the crowd, I heard the name of Jeremiah Lincoln' called out; and there, sure enough, stood my poor friend, looking as wo-begone and sheepish as the merest drab of a sky-lark in the dock.