fellow-creatures in a more pitiable aspect--were glad to disperse. In
truth, the effect of the storm upon them was perfectly miraculous.
Many a poor creature, blind from birth or infancy, was gifted with, or
restored to excellent sight; the maimed were suddenly cured--the deaf
made to hear--the dumb to speak--and the study baccagh, or cripple,
bounded away, at the rate of six miles an hour, cursing the whole thing
as a bad spec--a dead failure.

Solemn assignations of long promise, rustic courtships, and earnest
match-makings, were all knocked up, unless in case of those who availed
themselves of the early part of the day. Time and place, in fact, were
completely forgotten by the parties, each being anxious only to secure
the nearest and most commodious shelter. Nay, though ashamed to write
it, we are bound to confess that some of our countrymen were ungallant
enough, on meeting with their sweethearts, fairly to give them the
slip, or only to recognize them with a kind of dreary and equivocal
salutation, that might be termed a cross between a wink and a shiver.
Others, however, gallantly and magnanimously set the tempest at
defiance, or blessed their stars for sending them an opportunity of
sitting so close to their fair inamoratas, in order that their loving
pressure might, in some degree, aided by a glass of warm punch,
compensate the sweet creatures for the unexpected drenching they had
got.

It has been well observed, that there is no class of life in which
instances of great virtue and fortitude may not be found; and the
Justness of the apothegm was fully corroborated here. Cold, bitter and
tempestuous and terrible as was the day, amidst rain, wind, sleet, and
hail, there might be seen, in a thoroughfare about the centre of the
town, a cripple, apparently paralytic from the middle down, seated upon