Quid loquor, out ubi sum? quae mentem insania mutat.

I feel - I feel - I don't know how I feel.

It may be easily imagined that I did not soon recover from this shock. Some of my friends advised me to plunge into the "vortex of Harvard;" but I did not know where it was.

Far away in the desolate wilds of South America, where roams the disconsolate tapir, and the melancholy hyenas come trooping home at eventide; where the kangaroo leaps in demoniac exultation, and the boa-constrictor, after coiling himself tenderly but firmly around the waist of the intruder, gazes with embarrassing familiarity into his eyes, - in this forsaken region, far from civilization, with its weary load of unrest, its perpetual strivings after the unattainable, and its ceaseless Knock at the fast-closed gate of the empyrean, and all that --. But what am I saying, or where am I? Of course - I forgot - I am in South America; but this madness unseats my reason. I was wandering alone, and mourning for Carolinda. "O maiden," said I, "light of my more than pagan darkness, esoteric - or shall I say exoteric? - influence, which in conjunction with the centripetal - or shall I say centrifugal? - forces --

My meditations were at this point interrupted by a loud cry of "Yang, yang!" and suddenly before my affrighted gaze there stood the form of an aboriginal and autochthonous native. Of course I was scared perfectly indigo, the more so as he poured forth a torrent of unintelligible sounds, among which I barely distinguished the familiar syllables of Lardy and Linda. When I did recognize these, however, I leave the reader to imagine what feelings I experienced. All that impotent rage and hate mingled with love, all that blighted hope and the consciousness of personal injury combined with everlasting affection, could put into the heart of mortal man was depicted in my countenance. I fell at the feet of the brutal wild man, and implored him to restore me to my Linda. "Linda," said he, - his face wore a far-away, dreamy expression; his heart beat violently against his waistcoat pocket, and caused his watch-chain to swing to and fro, - "Linda," said he; then suddenly recollecting himself : -

"Will you ride to her to-day?

Will you ride to her to-day?

Will you ride to her to-day?

Will you ride to her -- "

I could bear this no longer. Rising to my full height, I adjusted my left heel against my right calf. I cocked my eye, and held to it an imaginary eye-glass, Then with an air of tremendous importance I remarked, -

"I should assume a cachinnatory expression." Truly the Harvard man is lord of the universe! This uncouth and unlettered savage at once changed his whole demeanor. He forthwith produced a horse eleven hands high, 1 which he bestrode. He then vaulted through the woods. I laid hands on a vagrant hyena and did likewise. He swam over lakes; I also swam over lakes. He bounded-over torrents; I also bounded over torrents. He scaled cliffs; I also scaled cliffs. At last we stopped before the door of a wigwam. In the darkness within I could just discern a female form. I sprang from my hyena, and, rushing-into the hut, fell into the arms of - Carolinda? no - Adelinda Higginsworth.

III.

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