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I’m going to state to you the remarkable adventures of a very remarkable man, who went to market to get a leg of mutton for his Sunday dinner. I have heard, or read somewhere or other, almost similar stories; whether they were real or imaginary, I am unable to say; but I can vouch for the authenticity of my story, for I know the hero well.

In the year 1812, it will be recollected that we had some military disputes with England, which elicited some pretty tall fights by land and sea, and the land we live in was considerably excited upon the subject, and patriotism rose to many degrees above blood heat. Philadelphia, about that time, like all other cities, I suppose, was the scene of drum-beating, marching and counter-marching, and volunteering of the patriotic people.

The President sent forth his proclamations, the governors of the respective States reiterated them, and a large portion of our brave republicans were soon in or marching to the battle field. There lived and wrought at his trade, carpentering, in the city of Philadelphia, about that time, a very tall, slim man, named Houp; Peter Houp, that was his name. He was a very steady, upright, and honest man, married, had a small, comfortable family, and to all intents and purposes, settled down for life. How deceptive, how unstable, how uncertain is man, to say nothing of the more frail portion of the creation–woman! Peter Houp one fair morning took his basket on his arm, and off he went to get a leg of mutton and trimmings for his next Sunday’s dinner. Beyond the object of research, Peter never dreamed of extending his travels for that day, certain. A leg of mutton is not an indifferent article, well cooked, a matter somewhat different to amateur cooks; and as good legs of mutton as can be found on this side of the big pond, can be found almost any Saturday morning in the Pennsylvania market wagons, which congregate along Second street, for a mile or two in a string. Peter could have secured his leg and brought it home in an hour or two at most.

But hours passed, noon came, and night followed it, and in the course of time, the morrow, the joyous Sunday, for which the leg of mutton was to be brought and prepared, and offered up, a sacrifice to the household gods and grateful appetites, came, but neither the leg of mutton, nor the man Peter, husband and father Houp, darkened the doors of the carpenter’s humble domicil, that day, the next or the next! I cannot, of course, realize half the agony or tortures of suspense that must have preyed upon that wife’s heart and brain, that must have haunted her feverish dreams at night, and her aching mind by day. When grim death strikes a blow, whenever so near and dear a friend is levelled, cold, breathless, dead–we see, we know there is the end! Grief has its season, the bitterest of woe then calms, subsides, or ceases; but lost –which hope prevents mourning as dead, and whose death-like absence almost precludes the idea that they live, engenders in the soul of true affection, a gloomy, torturing and desponding sorrow, more agonizing than the sting actual death leaves behind. I have endeavored to depict what must have been, what were the feelings of Peter Houp’s wife. She mourned and grieved, and still hoped on, though months and years passed away without imparting the slightest clue to the unfortunate fate of her husband. Her three children, two boys and a girl, grew up; ten, eleven, twelve years passed away, with no tidings of the lost man having reached his family; but they still lived with a kind of despairing hope that the husband and father would yet come home, and so he did.