insisting on drawing it over the cotton tatters of the veteran's dirty shirt.
And so walked off a man of a hundred years ago, in the coat of a man of a hundred years ahead. Mr. Ruggles, as we all know, is the look-out at the mast-head of the Age—giving to Public Progress, in many ways, his far-seeings into the next century to mark its charts by, and know its channels and dangers—and, of all men's coats in the world, old Billy Babcock were most drolly clad in his! It was a fossil of the Past in the shell of an embryo of the Future—two centuries at least between the vibrations (forward) of the pulse which the coat covered at morning, and the vibrations (backward) of the pulse which it covered at night!
How long this remarkable old vagrant is likely to live, I should scarcely venture to guess. He "loafs," to and fro, between here and Jersey, his four or five generations of descendants (one hundred and sixty-five of them, he says, and all poor) scattered along through the mountains, and he looks still vigorous enough to outlive the half of them, and some of us. Die when he will now, however, we have his likeness—and his hat! Come and see how the two explain each other, my dear Morris, and believe me
- Yours.
