FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR. I find, by perusal of our last number, that WILL WIZARD and EVERGREEN, taking advantage of my confinement, have been playing some of their gambols. I suspected these rogues of some mal-practices, in consequence of their queer looks and knowing winks whenever I came down to dinner; and of their not showing their faces at old Cockloft's for several days after the appearance of their precious effusions. Whenever these two waggish fellows lay their heads together, there is always sure to be hatched some notable piece of mischief; which, if it tickles no body else, is sure to make its authors merry. The public will take notice that, for the purpose of teaching these my associates better manners, and punishing them for their high misdemeanors, I have, by virtue of my authority, suspended them from all interference in Salmagundi, until they show a proper degree of repentance; or I get tired of supporting the burthen of the work myself. I am sorry for Will, who is already sufficiently mortified in not daring to come to the old house and tell his long stories and smoke his cygarr; but Evergreen, being an old beau, may solace himself in his disgrace by trimming up all his old finery and making love to the little girls. At present my right hand man is cousin Pindar, whom I have taken into high favor. He came home the other night all in a blaze like a sky-rocket ;-whisked up to his room in a paroxysm of poetic inspiration nor did we see any thing of him until late the next morning, when he bounced upon us at breakfast "Fire in each eye--and paper in each hand.” This is just the way with Pindar, he is like a volcano; will remain for a long time silent without emitting a single spark, and then, all at once, burst out in a tremendous explosion of rhyme and rhapsody. As the letters of my friend Mustapha seem to excite considerable curiosity, I have subjoined another. I do not vouch for the justice of his remarks, or the correctness of his conclusions; they are full of the blunders and errors into which strangers continually indulge, who pretend to give an account of this country before they well know : the geography of the street in which they live. The copies of my friend's papers being confused and without date, I cannot pretend to give them in systematic order ;-in fact they seem now and then to treat of matters which have occurred since his departure whether these are sly interpolations of that meddlesome wight Will Wizard, or whether honest Mustapha was gifted with the spirit of prophecy or second sight, I neither knownor in fact do I care. The following seems to have been written when the tripolitan prisoners were so much annoyed by the ragged state of their wardrobe. Mustapha feelingly depicts the embarrassments of his situation traveller like; makes an easy transition from his breeches to the seat of government, and incontinently abuses the whole administration; like a sapient traveller I once knew, who damned the french nation in tote -because they eat sugar with green peas. LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN, captain of a ketch, to Asem Hacchem, principal slave-driver to his highness the bashan of Tripoli. Sweet, oh, Asem! is the memory of distant friends! like the mellow ray of a departing sun it falls tenderly yet sadly on the heart. Every hour of absence from my native land rolls heavily by, like the sandy wave of the desert; and the fair shores of my country rise blooming to my imagination, clothed in the soft illusive charms of distance. I sigh, yet no one listens to the sigh of the captive; I shed the bitter tear of recollection, but no one sympathizes in the tear of the turbaned stranger! Think not, however, thou brother of my soul, that I complain of the horrors of my situation ;-think not that my captivity is attended with the labors, the chains, the scourges, the insults, that renders slavery, with us, more dreadful than the pangs of hesitating, lingering death. Light, indeed, are the restraints on the personal freedom of thy kinsman ; but who can enter into the afflictions of the mind? -who can describe the agonies of the heart? they are mutable as the clouds of the air, they are countless as the waves that divide me from my native country. I have, of late, my dear Asem, labored under an inconvenience singularly unfortunate, and am reduced to a dilemma most ridiculously embarrassing. Why should I hide it from the companion of my thoughts, the partner of my sorrows and my joys? Alas! Asem, thy friend Mustapha, the invincible captain of a ketch, is sadly in want of a pair of breeches! thou wilt doubtless smile, oh, most grave mussulman, to hear me indulge in such ardent lamentations about a circumstance so trivial, and a want apparently so easy to be satisfied: but Jittle canst thou know of the mortifications attending my necessities, and the astonishing difficulty of supplying them. Honored by the smiles and attentions of the beautiful ladies of this city, who have fallen in love with my whiskers and my turban; courted by the bashaws and the great men, who delight to have me at their feasts; the honor of my company eagerly solicited by every fiddler who |