chin covered with a snow-white beard, which gleamed with a very new and becoming splendor from the confusion of his unwashed perpetuities. The announcement of who was coming was at once understood—the very bad hat on its gilt peak effectually daily-fying the mention and memory of the old man—and the first to run and welcome him at the door was a fair lady in most amusing contrast to his build and belongings, the elegant "La Penserosa," in the prettiest of French caps and flowing négligés, her morning toilette as eloquent of the Present as he and his toggery of the Past.
Billy had walked twelve miles that morning (in his one hundred and third year, remember!) and had had no breakfast. He was soon fed and made comfortable, and then we ensconced, him in an easy-chair and gathered around him—one of our friends, fortunately, being a walking hydraulic of History and Statistics, and pumping the far-down memory of the old man with the pipe and valve of well-adjusted question and data. His memories of Washington and the military operations on the Hudson, of the battle of Stony Point and of the hanging of André, and his impressions of the various great men who figured before his eyes in the days now passed over to History, were skillfully drawn up. Our friend (Sam. B. Ruggles) was delighted with the old veteran's pertinacious and simple truthfulness, never allowing a question to lead him into an admission of what was not
