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In Crampton, he resided a year and then left the town and also the State. He returned to it again in six months and remained, industriously prosecuting his trade for about two years, when he again removed. He was unknown at Crampton then for thirteen months, when one day, about the first of January, he appeared again in that village and put himself to hard industry at his shoe bench. Five years he thus supported himself, when he was seized with a fever and laid by from his bench for his maintenance during the rest of his life. On his recovery he performed slight service here and there for such persons as needed help, and begged some portion of his scanty subsistence. This he did for (as it was proved) the period of fifty-three weeks, when he left Crampton and went back to Haretown and Oakville, where he resided in all seven years, dividing his time between them. Happily (shall we say it?) for White he held over in Crampton that one week. It made sure his continuous residence in the State six years without, during any portion of that time, receiving aid from the town authorities, and so he acquired a legal settlement there. (21)

He was warned out of Haretown and Oakville during the periods of his last sojourn there in beggary, it being evident that he would sooner or later become somebody's pauper! The authorities of the towns were as much afraid of him as of a wild beast that is hunted from place to place, and a price set on his head. (22) Unfortunately for Crampton, it was proved that he had resided as a good and faithful citizen, a voter, and payer of a poll tax in that town the full period (though little more!) of six years, and Crampton had to meet his support. He was now sixty years of age, and Siddleton made him hammer and stitch at his shoe-bench on the shoes of the paupers.

Miss Peters, otherwise called Sister Peters, a toothless, feeble, wasted old specimen of single-blessedness, had been one of the gay beauties of a town where there was a large and very celebrated university. She enjoyed the highest facilities of fashionable life in the place, and went through several rounds of admirers in many a distinct and passing class of university students. But at length she lost her youth and beauty. Her coquetry and sentiment grew stale. The students paid attention to younger girls, and Miss Peters and her falling locks went by the board. Out of ten chances for matrimony, on which she reckoned as certain any time she wanted them, no one ever ripened. The pear looked beautiful for a time and then it blasted. In the waning of her triumphs. Miss Peters removed with her father to Crampton, and at seventy-five years of age, after having been very serviceable there for years as a member of the Ladies' Sewing Society, and a pattern of virtue and industry, she found herself too feeble to maintain herself, and with no friends able to support her. She came on to the hands of the authorities a feeble old woman, poor in purse, poor in health, poor in intellect, poor in every thing but poverty, and in that affluent!

Yet Miss Emeline Flush did not see how important it was in these respects that she should use all her art to secure the hand and heart of Lawyer John Tools. She played a long, systematic game of coquetry with that gentleman, and only surrendered under other and entirely different circumstances from those that Miss Peters permitted to rule her. She idolized Mr. Tools, and Mr. Tools was half crazy for her. But Miss Flush didn't tell Mr. Tools how much she adored him; nor did Mr. Tools get a convenient occasion to whisper to her his ruling passion for a good long day of trial. But Mr. Tools' attentions were very marked, and they were read by Miss Flush, and by Miss Shauney, and by Mrs. Cornelia Williams, a widow of thirty. They were very evident attentions, and Miss Flush knew it.

But at length Miss Flush and Mr. Tools were compelled to make a declaration. Mr. Tools' was, that he had for several years admired her character, and that she possessed just the points of feminine loveliness that pleased him; and he had no objection to a common lot with her, if agreeable. Miss Flush's was, that she had not thought much about it; she had been otherwise pre-occupied in her thoughts; she had a good home with her sister, and very little to care for in this world; but she would confess that Lawyer Tools' attentions to her had not passed without her notice or reflection. She supposed it might be right for her to take the subject into consideration, and she would do so. Mr. Tools thanked her, and begged the liberty to kiss her hand, which she neither gave nor declined; so Mr. Tools took it gracefully to his lips.