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12
PETER RUGG,

was speaking, a pedlar with a cart of tin merchandise came up, all dripping; and, on being questioned, he said he had met that man and carriage within a fortnight, in four different states; that at each time he had inquired the way to Boston, and that a thunder shower like the present, had each time deluged his wagon and his wares, setting his tin pots, &c. afloat, so that he had determined to get marine insurance done for the future. But that which excited his surprise most, was the strange conduct of his horse, for that long before he could distinguish the man in the chair, his own horse stood still in the road and flung back his ears. "In short," said the pedlar, "I wish never to see that man and horse again; they do not look to me as though they belonged to this world."

This was all I could learn at that time; and the occurrence soon after, would have become with me, like one of those things which had never happened, had I not, as I stood recently on the door-step of Bennett's hotel in Hartford, heard a man say, "there goes Peter Rugg and his child! he looks wet and weary, and farther from Boston than ever." I was