DEAR SISTERS:—There has been great tumult and trouble in New York since I wrote my last report. Something that relates to the honor of Vermont has thrilled the public mind to a fearful extent. A smart, genial, warm-hearted, dashing person, by the name of Fisk—Mr. James Fisk—born and brought up in our State, has been shot in the largest tavern in the city, where he died, I greatly fear, without a realizing sense that he was so soon to be called before his Maker.

Many of you, my sisters, can remember this man—a great, handsome, good-natured-looking fellow, with sunshiny eyes, and a mustache that curled up like a pair of horns on each side of a mouth that always seemed ready to laugh at something. There wasn't a man that ever came to Sprucehill that everybody was so sure to remember. His great wagon, painted off like a circus, with four horses a-drawing it through the village, with a splash-dash noise of whips and wheels and hoofs, was enough to make the money spring right out of one's pocket. Mercy on me! Didn't he make the dry-goods fly! Everybody bought something of him, and I must say that everybody liked him. In the peddling line he was a sort of P. T. Barnum, only he didn't know how to stick to his trade as Barnum has. He drove his four horses; he made money like everything; he outgrew Brattleborough, which was his native place, and soon got above peddling, his native business.

The next step towards his exaltation and ruin was that he left Vermont, a man who will do that of his own accord is sure to run wild. Well, he left his native State, and set up at the Hub of the Universe, which every one knows is Boston, where he began his education as a financier and a millionaire.

Boston is a great city. I should like to hear any one dare to deny that; but, then, people here say that, in the way of financing, the Hub knows how to save, and skimp, and deposit, and get twice her share of offices out of the President of the United States; but, outside of that, she is nowhere, compared to New York. She has no idea of turning a sharp stock corner, couldn't get up a Black Friday to save her life; in fact, is only good at an old-fashioned tea-party. This is what Cousin Dempster says about Boston, and he ought to know, being a first-class broker in Wall Street, and New England born.

Well, of course, it wasn't long before Mr. Fisk outgrew the Hub, which hadn't room for all the spokes which he wanted to carry to his wheel, and off he comes to New York, gets into the Erie Railroad, and, goodness knows how he did it! but before people knew who he was, he went smashing and crashing up that road, prowled through Wall Street like a roaring lion, or bear, or some other such animals as gore and claw each other in that neighborhood.

Well, after he had sent a good many brokers sky-high with his horns, and knocked others down with his paws, for he tackled in with both, he goes kiting off to sea by way of the Sound.

While people were wondering what he would do next, he had gone to work and fitted up great palatial steamboats, and invited the President to travel in them, which the President did, not dreaming that he was expected to build up a cattle-pen or a bear-garden in exchange for a little hospitality.

Well, it's hard satisfying a Vermonter when he once breaks loose from his native mountains. After gobbling up railroads and putting steamboats afloat, Mr. Fisk just swung back into Wall Street one day, and upset things generally in less time than any man ever did before. No shootist ever brought down more birds at a shot, than he left men in that street rich in the morning, and ruined at night. Cousin Dempster says it was awful.

Mr. Fisk didn't care, but wheeled out of the street just as he used to drive his pedler's wagon, with hoofs a-rattling and whips a-cracking, riding over ruined men everywhere in his track.

Besides all this, Mr. Fisk had a great, grand, overpowering Opera House, and carried on a theatre, in which women danced, like Black-crookers, and sang like—well, I can't tell what they did sing like, not having a comparison handy—but it was awfully interesting, Cousin Dempster said; and I believe him, for E. E. says he used to go to that Opera House alone so often, that she began to be afraid that he was getting into some business with Mr. Fisk that must be transacted in the evening—a thing she didn't like, the man being considered so overpoweringly fascinating.

I don't know whether Mr. Fisk belonged to the Woman's Righters or not, but there was a good deal of talk about him, such as would have compelled any religious society in Vermont to get up an investigation and some extra prayer-meetings, which he wouldn't have liked, being mostly given contrary-wise. But the one thing he hadn't done was to join a church, and, you see, nobody in particular had a right to call him to account but his wife, and she didn't.

Some people were mean enough to hint that his system of married life wasn't just the thing for a couple brought up in the purifying atmosphere of a Vermont village, and went so far as to turn up their noses because he lived about the Opera House and she in Boston, close to the very heart of the Hub, as if any woman could get further away from original sin than that.

But these slanderers knew as well as could be, that Mr. Fisk had a free pass on the telegraph and steam communication with his wife every day. Besides, didn't the newspapers give his most private actions to an admiring public, every few hours, and couldn't she read how blameless and self-sacrificing his life was.

Besides being a great financier and seafaring man, our Vermont pedler took up social life as a specialty, and distinguished himself among the high fashionables. The moral ideas that he had brought from Down East, were just as dashing as his Wall-street corners. He still kept the telegraph wires quivering with conjugal messages, and when he took domestic ease and the fresh salt air on the Jersey sea-coast, at Long Branch, in a high-swung carriage, with four seats, and stable help in trainer's clothes, wasn't his wife at another watering-place, called Newport, with a high-swinging carriage of her own, all cushioned off with silk, and with her gold-mounted harness rattling over six horses, just as black and shiny as his?

If that isn't conjugal sympathy, such as goes down among the upper crust of New York, I don't know what is.

Just the same number of horses, just the same swing in her carriage, just the same people—no, I am a little out there. She had relations in the seats, and he hadn't always.

But then, what is all that compared to a great many fashionable, married folks in New York—so extravagantly fond of each other, that they make the Atlantic Ocean for a connecting link, year after year, and correspond tenderly in bills of exchange.

Our poor, dead pedler from Vermont wasn't the only man in New York who lived and loved by steam and telegraph.