CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

A bright glowing day was the following one, the day of the dinner party; and right gladly did the golden sun beam out from the deep fathomless sky, as if from his lofty look-out he were aware of what was going on in this world below, and rejoiced in the failure of the evil machinations which had been so long disturbing the tranquillity of the worthy individuals who have figured in this history. And fortunate it was that neither clouds nor rain obscured his face, for had the latter been added to the cares which the approaching dinner-party had already accumulated upon the culinary department of Harson's household, the house-keeper in the tall cap with stiff ribbons would have gone stark-mad. Miserable woman! how she worked and fumed, and panted and tugged, and kneaded and rolled, and stuffed and seasoned, and skewered and basted, and beat, on that day! From soup to dessert and from dessert to soup, over and over again, she toiled; fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, gravies, were all mingled in her head helter-skelter. She had dreamed of nothing else during the whole of the previous night, excepting a short interlude in the aforesaid dream, when she was night-mared by a fat pig, bestrode by a half-starved boy, who was all eyes. And now, as the day waned and the hour of the dinner approached, her ferment increased, until, to use a metaphor, she had worked herself up into a mental lather. Her voice was in every quarter, and so was her quick, hurried step. She was in the entry, up stairs, in the pantry, in the kitchen and in the cellar; at the street-door giving orders to the grocer's dirty boy to bring the cinnamon and allspice, and not to forget the sugar and butter, and to be sure to recollect the anchovies and pickles. The next moment she was scolding the butcher, because he had been late with the chops and cutlets; and every five minutes she thrust her head into the room to look at the clock, lest Time should steal a march upon her. Eleven, twelve, one, two o'clock. The tumult increased. Mrs. Chowles, punctual to her promise, made her appearance; forthwith dived into the kitchen, and did not emerge until dinner-time. The only person utterly unmoved was Harson, who had attended to his part of the business by looking after the wine, and who now sat with his feet to the fire, resolved to trouble his head about nothing, and apparently more asleep than awake. At times, however, he rose and went to one corner of the room, where a small boy who seemed to be worn down by suffering, lay coiled up and sound asleep on a chair-cushion. The old man bent over him, gently parted the hair from his forehead, and then rising up, somewhat red in the face from the exertion, rubbed his hands one over the other by way of indicating that all was as it should be; stole back to his seat on tiptoe, lest he should awaken him, and forthwith relapsed into his former state of dreamy abstraction. Nothing could arouse him; not even the house-keeper when she dashed into the room with a face at roasting heat, and demanded the key of the wine-cellar. It was handed to her mechanically, and mechanically pocketed when she brought it back.

But the hour of dinner drew near; and a smell began to pervade the house which aroused Harson at last. He sat up in his chair and smacked his lips; and Spite, who for an undue curiosity as to the contents of a small pasty, exhibited early in the day, had been escorted into the room by the house-keeper aided by a broomstick, sat under the same chair licking his lips and slavering profusely.

Again the red face of the house-keeper was projected in the room, and as instantly withdrawn. It wanted half an hour to the time. In and out again; it wanted twenty-five minutes. In and out again; twenty minutes. The matter was growing serious, and there was something frantic in her looks. But this time Harson caught her, and told her that it was time to put an end to that performance, as he expected his friends every minute; that she must guess as to the time; and that he would ring when she was to serve the dinner.

A rap at the door! and before it could be answered, a heavy step crossed the ante-chamber.

'There's Frank,' said Harson, rising and facing the door; and in came the doctor. But he was not alone; for close behind him followed Ned Somers, dressed in his best. Harry shook hands with them; but before he had time to do more than that, Jacob Rhoneland entered with Kate on his arm, looking very rosy from her walk.

What could it be that caused Ned's heart to flounce and dance about as wildly as a caged bird; and his cheek to grow at first pale, and then burning hot; and his lips to quiver, and his voice to tremble so that he could scarcely speak; and for a moment was unable even to tell Kate that he was glad to see her? Whatever the complaint was, it was infectious; for Kate's heart certainly did beat very rapidly; and her color went and came, until it settled into a deep burning blush, as she turned and saw Ned there, looking at her as if he had eyes for nothing else.

'Good morning Mr. Somers,' said she, at last, in a tone that was neither firm nor clear.

'Call me Ned, Kate,' said he in a low voice; 'don't say _Mr._ Somers. Wont you shake hands with me? There can be no harm in that.' He extended his hand; she placed hers in it, and at the same time whispered in his ear, (for Harry, seeing that there was some by-play going on, kept Jacob busy,) 'Speak to father as if nothing had happened. I think he's inclined to make up. _Do_, Ned.'

Turning from him, she commenced talking to the Doctor, while Somers, after a moment's hesitation, went up to the old man and offered his hand.

Rhoneland hesitated, for he experienced the reluctance which old age always evinces to succumb to those younger in years; and it was not very pleasant to admit that his conduct toward Ned had been wrong. But there was something in the expression of Ned's face, and even in the way in which he offered his hand, which showed that the past was forgiven; and beside that, what had already happened could not be mended by holding out; so Jacob grasped his hand, and said frankly:

'Ned, my young friend, I wronged thee sadly. I hope you will pardon it.'

'That's right, Jacob! Spoken like a whole-hearted old fellow, as you are!' exclaimed Harson, patting him on the shoulder. 'To be sure he will forgive you, and thank you for the chance. If he doesn't he's not what I take him to be. Don't you pardon him?' demanded he, turning to Somers, and at the same time casting a quizzical look in the direction of Kate.

Ned laughed; said something about pardon being unnecessary, where no offence had been taken; and then commenced talking about indifferent matters.

Presently Holmes came in; and after him Grosket; and one or two cronies of Harson's; and then the little girl; so that the room became quite full. The boy too, aroused by the noise of talking, awoke; stared wildly around him, and though a boy of genteel lineage, evinced a great distaste to mingling in society; and fought manfully to retain his position in the corner, when Harson attempted to lead him out. His sister endeavored, in an undertone, to impress upon him the propriety of adapting his manners to the change in his situation; but it must be confessed that her success was but indifferent; and it is a matter of some doubt whether he would ever have emerged, had not a tall, awkward boy, (a second cousin of the housekeeper, and apprenticed to a tailor,) who had been borrowed to officiate as waiter on this eventful occasion, thrust his head in the door and remarked, 'Cousin Martha says you may come to dinner just as quick as you like,' and forthwith disappeared, slamming the door after him, and clattering across the entry as if shod with paving-stones.

This aroused the company; and this too emboldened the small boy, who being restrained by his sister from rushing in the room before any one else, nevertheless crowded in, and secured a seat at the table, opposite the best dish.

What a sight! A table loaded with fish and flesh and fowl; glittering and glowing with cleanliness; linen as white as snow, and plates and dishes that glistened and shone until you could see your face in them, while the steam alone, which arose from each of them, might have made a lean man fat; and then there were the decanters too, in which the ruby wine sparkled, until it made even Dick Holmes smack his lips.

'Aha!' ejaculated one of the neighbors, a thin, hungry fellow, with large eyes; 'aha!' And he snuffed up the dinner as if he intended to appropriate it all, and as if, mistaking the table and its contents for a snuff-box, he supposed his nose to be the only member destined to play a part there.

Harry paused at the head of his table, and said a short grace; and then seizing a carving knife, he plunged it forthwith into the fat saddle: right merrily the red gravy spirted out; and as he drew the knife along the bone, and cut out the long strips, the steam and savor filling the room, it was to be feared that the thin neighbor would have gone beside himself, lest his pet piece should be given to some one else before his turn came. But such a dinner as graced that table is a thing to be eaten, not spoken of; and so thought the small boy, who notwithstanding his genteel extraction, brought with him the appetite which he had acquired by education. A dreadful havoc he made in that fat saddle! It was labor lost for his sister to kick and pinch him under the table, in hopes of checking his course. He kicked backed again, but could not pinch; his hands were too busy. What eyes he had for the meats and gravies! what a deaf ear he turned to all invitations to waste his energies on bread and vegetables, or trifles of that sort! His appetite, though belonging to a child, was full grown, and needed no assistance. All that he required was quantity--and he got it.

'Help yourself, my son,' said Harson, actually growing hungry by seeing the child eat. 'Don't spare any thing.'

The boy looked up at him, and said nothing. He was a fellow of few words, but of great action; and for one of six years of age, he was a phenomenon; and displayed a capacity which would have done credit to a man or a barrel.

The first course went off, and so did a second and third. Martha had excelled herself; a cooking-stove was nothing to her. Everything was praised; and at every fresh eulogy, the tall boy was missing from his attendance on the table. He had darted to the kitchen, to communicate the intelligence to his aunt. How _he_ enjoyed that party! how he skimmed his fingers round the plates, as he took them through the entry; sucking the ends of them so loudly, that his aunt thought that corks were flying out of the porter-bottles! He was perfectly happy. One thing alone puzzled him; that was the knotty question why people couldn't eat every thing off the same plate.

It was remarked, that when the dinner was over, some of the guests were uncommonly mellow; and it is credibly asserted, that Dick Holmes, who had spent his life among parchment and cobwebs, had during the meal buried his mouth in the bosom of his own waistcoat, and had there been heard confidentially singing to himself a short song of an Anacreontic character. But be that as it may, when he rose from the table, his eye certainly was a little lively, and his spirits were high. Nor was there any flagging among the rest; for whether the jests were good or bad, or the songs poor, or the conversation common-place, certain it is, that a more jovial set had never met. Every one seemed to have been placed beside the person who suited him; Harry sat with Jacob on one side of him, and the widow at the head of the table, with the Doctor at her right hand; and Dick Holmes and Grosket together; and Ned and Kate, so close that their elbows touched; and Annie beside her brother; and her brother, although somewhat incommoded by his sister, directly opposite the fattest part of the saddle of mutton! And then the one or two neighbors, who knew no one except each other, seated in a knot, contrived to grow moist and merry, because the others did, and laughed because Harry did. Choice spirits! who could split their very sides, without a joke to abet them in it; weren't they the fellows to help out a dinner party?

When they separated, it was late at night. The doctor gallantly volunteered to escort the widow to her abode, which offer was accepted without hesitation. Harry remarked that as it was a fine night, he thought he would walk too.

'Come, Jacob, you and I will go together,' said he, taking the old man by the arm; 'and Ned, you look after Kate. No grumbling, but make yourself useful.' Saying this, he trudged rapidly on, dragging the old man with him.

What passed between him and Jacob, or what took place between Ned and Kate, I cannot say; but they certainly were the two tardiest people that ever walked; for long after Harson and Rhoneland had reached the end of their journey, and stood waiting in front of Rhoneland's door, they were not in sight; and when they did at last appear, it seemed a perfect eternity before they were within calling distance; and then even longer before they reached to the door. And although from the pace at which they had come, it might have been argued that one or the other of them was laboring under extreme debility or fatigue, yet it was a remarkable fact, that the looks of neither justified such a conclusion; for Kate appeared uncommonly lively and buoyant, and Ned seemed as if he only required two fiddlers and a tambourine to perform his part in an imaginary quadrille in the street.

'What idlers you are!' exclaimed Harry, as they came up! 'As for you,' said he, turning to Ned, 'such a loiterer should be trusted to escort no one unless it were his grandmother or a rheumatic old lady of seventy.'

Ned Somers laughed, as he answered: 'We don't all walk as rapidly as you do.'

'The more shame for you,' exclaimed Harson. 'Upon my life! I believe I'm younger than any of you. Look to yourself, my lad, or I may take it into my head to cut you out of a wife; and if you lose her, you won't require the snug little legacy which I intend to leave you when I'm under ground. Come; shake hands with the girl, and bid her good night: you've kept her in the street long enough. Good night, Jacob--Good night, Kate.'

He took her hand, and whispered, 'Be of good heart; your father is coming round.'

His mouth was very near her ear; and as he whispered, Ned happened to be looking at them, and thought that the communication did not stop with the whisper; and Harson himself looked very wickedly up at him, as much as to say: 'Do you see that?--you had better have a sharp eye to your interests!'

Long and earnest was the conversation which ensued between Harson and Somers on their way home; and nobly did the character of that old man shine out, as he detailed his future views for his young friend's welfare.

'You need not thank me,' said he, in reply to Ned's warm acknowledgments. 'The best return that I can have will be, to find you always in word and deed such that I may be proud of you; and hereafter, when I see others looking up to you, and hear you spoken of as one whose character is above all reproach, that I may say to myself: 'Thank God, I helped to make him what he is.' This is all that I want, Ned; and your future life will be your best acknowledgment, or will prove your heartless ingratitude. Let neither success nor failure tempt you to swerve from what your own heart tells you to be right and fair. Turn out as your schemes may, never forget to keep your motives pure; and believe me, that come what will, you'll find an easy conscience a great comforter in the hour of trial. Your father was one of my oldest friends; a noble upright man he was; and it would have wounded him deeply that any one belonging to him should have been otherwise; and it would give me many a heavy hour if his only child did not turn out all that I expect him to be. I am right glad to learn that you are getting bravely on in your business; and as for this matter with Kate,' said he, pausing, for they had come to where their routes separated, 'it can easily be made right. I love her as my own child; and I would not have her thwarted for the world. I'll see Jacob again to-morrow; and have no doubt that he will give his consent at last. Perhaps it would be better for you not to present yourself at his house too soon. Work your way back to where you were, cautiously, and say nothing to him about marrying Kate, until you and he are on your old terms of good fellowship. It wont be long, depend on it: and now, recollect what I told you a few moments ago. If you want any assistance in your business, or if a loan of a thousand or two dollars, or a good word from me, will push you on, you shall have it. Good night!' And Harson had not gone a hundred yards, before he was whistling so loud that he might have been heard half a mile.

'God help you, Harry!' muttered Somers, looking after the stout, burly figure of his friend; 'God bless your warm old heart! What a glorious world this would be, if there were more in it like you!'

LITERARY NOTICES.

NARRATIVE OF THE TEXAN SANTA FE EXPEDITION: Comprising a description of a Tour through Texas, and across the great South-western prairies, the Camanche and Cayguea Hunting-grounds, with an account of the suffering from want of food, losses from hostile Indians, and final capture of the Texans, and their march as prisoners to the city of Mexico. By GEORGE WILKINS KENDALL. In two volumes. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

This is by far the most racy and interesting book of travels we have read for a long time. Every body is of course acquainted with the general history of the expedition; its romantic projects, its speedy defeat, and the calamitous sufferings which its members were forced to undergo. But ill-fated as it was, the rich and most amusing personal incident with which every step of its progress appears from this book to have been crowded, commends it most forcibly to our admiration. We cannot say that we should have been quite willing to accompany our friend KENDALL through all the severities of his adventurous journey; nor can we refuse our sincere sympathy with him and his brave companions, in the terrible scenes through which they passed. But he has told all these adventures in so pleasing and interesting a manner, and has so sprinkled through the narrative sketches of personal incident, abounding with wit and humor, that the volumes must be read with a delight as keen as the sufferings recorded were real and severe. Mr. KENDALL writes in a style admirably adapted to the narration of just such a history as he has given; it is simple and clear, aiming at nothing more than to give a plain statement of actual occurrences; and yet it is remarkably spirited, and distinguished at times by great felicity of expression. He is a capital traveller, never shrinking from any danger or difficulty, close in his observation, and gifted with a love of fun, and a 'touch' of humor which no extremity, however terrible or threatening, can wholly repress. The reader of the work must be continually surprised at the repeated instances which occur where this disposition is strongly manifested; and while it must have relieved to a considerable degree the sufferings which he was forced to undergo, it gives to the book increased and attractive interest. We should be glad to follow Mr. KENDALL through his journey, and present copious extracts from the account he has given of its progress and incidents; but this our limits will not allow; and we can only glance at the general history of the expedition, and copy a tithe of the passages we have marked in reading the two excellent volumes he has given us.

At the opening of his book, Mr. KENDALL gives us a statement of the motives which induced him to join the expedition, and an introduction to the persons of whom it was composed. His purposes, of course, were entirely pacific, growing out of a desire to recruit his health, a wish to procure new materials for writing, and a love of adventure in general. He took care to provide himself with passports from the Mexican authorities, which he naturally supposed would protect him, as an American citizen, from molestation and injury. The first part of their journey led them over the vast prairies and hunting grounds of Western Texas; and their adventurous progress is admirably sketched in his flowing narrative. Their exploits in hunting buffalo; their frights from, and encounters with, the wild Indians; their serenades from the wolves, and all the incidents by which a journey of so large a troop over ground before almost untrodden, would naturally be distinguished, are most graphically and humorously described. We copy the following interesting description of a _stampede_, or flight of terror, with which great numbers of horses or oxen are sometimes seized, with a humorous sketch of the exploits in this line, of one of the nags of the expedition:

'Nothing can exceed the grandeur of the scene when a large _cavallada_, or drove of horses, takes a 'scare.' Old, weather-beaten, time-worn, and broken-down steeds--horses that have nearly given out from hard work and old age--will at once be transformed into wild and prancing colts. When first seized with that indescribable terror which induces them to fly, they seem to have been suddenly endowed with all the attributes of their original wild nature. With heads erect, tails and manes streaming in air, eyes lit up and darting beams of fright, old and jaded hacks will be seen prancing and careering about with all the buoyancy of action which characterizes the antics of young colts; then some one of the drove, more frightened than the rest, will dash off in a straight line, the rest scampering after him, and apparently gaining fresh fears at every jump. The throng will then sweep along the plain with a noise which may be likened to something between a tornado and an earthquake, and as well might feeble man attempt to arrest either of the latter.

'Were the earth rending and cleaving beneath their feet, horses, when under the terryfying influence of a _stampede_, could not bound away with greater velocity or more majestic beauty of movement. I have seen many an interesting race, but never any thing half so exciting as the flight of a drove of frightened horses. The spectator, who may possibly have a nag among them which he has been unable to get into a canter by dint of spur and whip, sees his property fairly flying away at a pace that a thorough-bred racer might envy. Better 'time,' to all appearance, he has never seen made, and were it not that he himself is as much astounded as the horses, there might be very pretty betting upon the race.

'On one occasion, when a closely-hobbled horse was rushing madly along the prairie under the influence of fright, his owner coolly remarked: 'I wish I could make that critter go as fast on my own account without hobbles, as he can on his own with them--I'd gamble on him _sure_.' And so it is. No simile can give the reader a fair conception of the grandeur of the spectacle, and the most graphic arrangement of words must fall far short in describing the startling and imposing effect of a regular _stampede_!

'While upon this subject, I should not, perhaps, neglect to notice one of the little private _stampedes_ my friend Falconer's horse was in the habit of occasionally getting up, principally on his own individual account and to gratify his own peculiar tastes and desires, entirely regardless, all the while, of his master's convenience as well as of the public safety.

'He was a short, thick-set, scrubby, wiry nag, tough as a pine knot, and self-willed as a pig. He was moreover exceedingly lazy, as well as prone to have his own way, and take his own jog--preferring a walk or gentle trot to a canter; and so deep-rooted were his prejudices in favor of the former methods of getting over the ground, that neither whip nor spur could drive him from them. He possessed a commendable faculty of taking most especial good care of himself, which he manifested by being always found where water was nearest and the grass best, and on the whole might be termed, in the language of those who consider themselves judges of horse flesh, a 'tolerable chunk of a pony' for a long journey.

'He had one bad quality however, which was continually putting his master to serious inconvenience, and on more than one occasion came near resulting seriously to all. One day we stopped to 'noon' close by a spring of water, and had simply taken the bridles from our horses to give them a chance to graze, when he improved the occasion to show off one of his eccentricities. Falconer had a way, as I have before stated, of packing all his scientific, cooking, and other instruments upon his horse, and on the occasion to which I have alluded, some one of them chanced to chafe or gall the pony, inducing him to give a kick up with his hinder limbs. The rattling of the pots and pans started him off immediately, and the faster he ran the more they rattled. We immediately secured our horses by catching up the _lariats_, and then watched the fanciful antics of the animal that had raised all the commotion.

'He would run about ten jumps and then stop and kick up about as many times; then he would shake himself violently, and then start off again on a gallop. Every now and then a culinary or scientific instrument would be detached from its fastenings, when the infuriated pony would manage to give it a kick before it struck the ground and send it aloft again. The quadrant took the direction toward the sun without taking it; the saucepan was kicked into a stew; the thermometer was up to an hundred--inches above the ground, and fell to--worth nothing. To sum it all up, what with rearing, pitching, kicking, and galloping about, the pony was soon rid of saddle and all other incumbrances, and then went quietly to feeding, apparently well satisfied with all the trouble he had given his owner.

'The whole affair was ludicrous in the extreme, defying description. The rattling of the tin, earthen, and other ware, as the pony snorted, kicked, and pranced about, made a noise resembling that produced at a _charivari_. His antics were of the most unseemly nature, too--and the cool philosophy of Mr. Falconer, as he quietly followed in the wake of the vicious animal, picking up the fragments scattered along, completed a picture which would have made the fortune of Cruikshank, had he been on the spot to take it down. Some time after this adventure the Indians stole the horse, but they made a bad bargain of it.'

There are scores of passages, describing the burning of a prairie, hunting buffaloes, fighting the Indians, camping out at night under a deluge of rain, and other scenes by which their journey was marked; but we must pass to the following account of the feelings which attend starvation, which we copy for its intrinsic interest, and as an instance of the fearful extremities to which the expedition was sometimes reduced:

'I have never yet seen a treatise on dissertation upon starving to death; I can speak _feelingly_ of nearly every stage except the last. For the first two days through which a strong and healthy man is doomed to exist upon nothing, his sufferings are, perhaps, more acute than in the remaining stages; he feels an inordinate, unappeasable craving at the stomach, night and day. The mind runs upon beef, bread, and other substantials; but still, in a great measure, the body retains its strength. On the third and fourth days, but especially on the fourth, this incessant craving gives place to a sinking and weakness of the stomach, accompanied by nausea. The unfortunate sufferer still desires food, but with loss of strength he loses that eager craving which is felt in the earlier stages. Should he chance to obtain a morsel or two of food, as was occasionally the case with us, he swallows it with a wolfish avidity; but five minutes afterward his sufferings are more intense than ever. He feels as if he had swallowed a living lobster, which is clawing and feeding upon the very foundation of his existence. On the fifth day his cheeks suddenly appear hollow and sunken, his body attenuated, his color an ashy pale, and his eye wild, glassy, cannibalish. The different parts of the system now war with each other. The stomach calls upon the legs to go with it in quest of food: the legs, from very weakness, refuse. The sixth day brings with it increased suffering, although the pangs of hunger are lost in an overpowering languor and sickness. The head becomes giddy; the ghosts of well-remembered dinners pass in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh day comes, bringing increased lassitude and farther prostration of strength. The arms hang listlessly, the legs drag heavily. The desire for food is still left, to a degree, but it must be brought, not sought. The miserable remnant of life which still hangs to the sufferer is a burden almost too grievous to be borne; yet his inherent love of existence induces a desire still to preserve it, if it can be saved without a tax upon bodily exertion. The mind wanders. At one moment he thinks his weary limbs cannot sustain him a mile--the next, he is endowed with unnatural strength, and if there he a certainty of relief before him, dashes bravely and strongly onward, wondering whence proceeds this new and sudden impulse.

'Farther than this, my experience runneth not. The reader may think I have drawn a fancy sketch--that I have colored the picture too highly: now, while I sincerely trust he may never be in a situation to test its truth from actual experience, I would in all sober seriousness say to him, that many of the sensations I have just described I have myself experienced, and so did the ninety-and-eight persons who were with me from the time when we first entered the grand prairie until we reached the flock of sheep, to which more pleasing subject I will now return.'

The history of the base betrayal of the party to the Mexicans by one of their members named LEWIS, gives us a picture of Mexican duplicity most vivid and striking: but it is only the prelude to cruelties more barbarous and revolting than have recently stained the acts of any but the most savage and uncultivated natives. After being disarmed, under pretence that it was only a formality, and then promised that their arms would be at once restored, they were seized and ordered to be _shot_; but from this they were saved by the interference of one of the Mexican officers less blood-thirsty than the rest. They were immediately started off for Santa Fe, half-starving and worn down by fatigue, and heard the bloody order given to the armed guard which attended them: 'If any one of them pretends to be sick or tired on the road, '_Shoot him down and bring back his ears_.'' The following extracts describe some of the scenes they were forced to witness:

'A walk, or rather a hobble of two hours, for we were so stiff and foot-sore that we could not walk, brought us once more to the plaza or public square of San Miguel. The place was now literally filled with armed men--a few regular troops being stationed immediately about the person of Armijo, while more than nine-tenths of the so-called soldiers were miserably deficient in every military appointment. A sergeant's guard of the regular troops was immediately detailed to take charge of our little party, and after bidding adieu to Don Jesus, as we hoped forever, we were marched to a small room adjoining the soldiers' quarter. This room fronted on the plaza, and had a small window looking out in that direction; but the only entrance was from a door on the side. Sentinels were immediately placed at the little window and door, leading us to suppose that this was to be our regular prison-house; but we had scarcely been there ten minutes before a young priest entered at the door, and said that one of our party was to be immediately shot! While gazing at each other with looks of eager inquiry, wondering that one was to be shot and not all, and while each one of us was earnestly and painfully speculating on the question which of his fellows Armijo had singled out for a victim, the young priest raised himself on tiptoe, and looking over our heads, pointed through the windows of our close and narrow prison. We hurriedly turned our eyes in that direction, and were shocked at seeing one of our men, his hands tied behind his back, while a bandage covered his eyes, led across the plaza by a small guard of soldiers. Who the man was we could not ascertain at the time, but that he was one of the Texans was evident enough from his dress. The priest said that he had first been taken prisoner, that while attempting to escape he had been retaken, and was now to suffer death. A horrible death it was, too! His cowardly executioners led him to a house near the same corner of the square we were in, not twenty yards from us, and after heartlessly pushing him upon his knees, with his head against the wall, six of the guard stepped back about three paces, and at the order of the corporal _shot the poor fellow in the back_! Even at that distance the executioners but half did their barbarous work; for the man was only wounded, and lay writhing upon the ground in great agony. The corporal stepped up, and with a pistol ended his sufferings by shooting him through the heart. So close was the pistol that the man's shirt was set on fire, and continued to burn until it was extinguished by his blood!

'Howland's hands were tied closely behind him, and as he approached us we could plainly see that his left ear and cheek had been cut entirely off, and that his left arm was also much hacked, apparently by a sword. The guard conducted their doomed prisoner directly by us on the left, and when within three yards of us the appearance of his scarred cheek was ghastly; but as he turned his head to speak, a placid smile, as of heroic resignation to his fate, lit up the other side of his face, forming a contrast almost unearthly. We eagerly stepped forward to address him, but the miscreants who had charge of us pushed us back with their muskets, refusing even the small boon of exchanging a few words with an old companion now about to suffer an ignominious death. Howland saw and felt the movement on our part. He turned upon us another look, a look full of brave resolution as well as resignation, and, in a low but distinct tone, uttered: '_Good-bye, boys; I've got to suffer. You must_----' But the rest of the sentence died on his lips, for he was now some yards in the rear of us, and out of hearing.

'The guard who had charge of us now wheeled us round, and marched us in the same route taken by our unfortunate guide, and within ten yards of him. A more gloomy procession cannot be imagined. With Howland in advance, we were now conducted to the plaza, and halted close by the spot where, in plain sight, lay the body of our recently-murdered companion. A bandage was placed over the eyes of the new victim, but not until he had seen the corpse of his dead comrade. Worlds would we have given could we be permitted to exchange one word with our unoffending friend--to receive his last, dying request--yet even this poor privilege was denied us. After the cords which confined his arms had been tightened, and the bandage pulled down so as to conceal the greater part of his face, Howland was again ordered to march. With a firm, undaunted step he walked up to the place of execution, and there, by the side of his companion, was compelled to fall upon his knees with his face towards the wall. Six of the guard then stepped back a yard or two, took deliberate aim at his back, and before the report of their muskets died away poor Howland was in eternity! Thus fell as noble, as generous, and as brave a man as ever walked the earth.'

The following passage narrates another barbarity of the same character:

'Just as we were starting, a man named John McAllister, a native of Tennessee and of excellent family, complained that one of his ankles was badly sprained, and that it was utterly impossible for him to walk. The unfortunate man was naturally lame in the other ankle, and could never walk but with difficulty and with a limp. On starting, he was now allowed to enter a rude Mexican cart, which had been procured by the Alcalde of Valencia for the purpose of transporting some of the sick and lame prisoners; but before it had proceeded a mile upon the road it either broke down or was found to be too heavily loaded. At all events, McAllister was ordered by Salazar to hobble along as best he might, and to overtake the main body of prisoners, now some quarter of a mile in advance. The wretch had frequently told those who, from inability or weakness, had fallen behind, that he would shoot them rather than have the march delayed; not that there was any necessity for the hot haste with which we were driven, but to gratify his brutal disposition did he make these threats. Although he had struck, and in several cases severely beaten, many of the sick and lame prisoners, we could not believe that he was so utterly destitute of feeling, so brutal, as to murder a man in cold blood whose only fault was that he was crippled and unable to walk. He could easily have procured transportation for all if he had wished, and that he would do so rather than shoot down any of the more unfortunate we felt confident: how much we mistook the man!

'On being driven from the cart, McAllister declared his inability to proceed on foot. Salazar drew his sword and peremptorily ordered him to hurry on, and this when he had half a dozen led mules, upon either of which he could have placed the unfortunate man. Again McAllister, pointing to his swollen and inflamed ankle, declared himself unable to walk. Some half a dozen of his comrades were standing around him, with feelings painfully wrought up, waiting the _denouement_ of an affair which, from the angry appearance of Salazar, they now feared would be tragical. Once more the bloodthirsty savage, pointing to the main body of prisoners, ordered the cripple to hurry forward and overtake them--_he could not_! 'Forward!' said Salazar, now wrought up to a pitch of phrenzy. 'Forward, or I'll shoot you on the spot!' 'Then shoot!' replied McAllister, throwing off his blanket and exposing his manly breast, 'and the quicker the better!' Salazar took him at his word, and a single ball sent as brave a man as ever trod the earth to eternity! His ears were then cut off, his shirt and pantaloons stripped from him, and his body thrown by the roadside as food for wolves!'

In the following extract, of a different description, we have a sketch of a real 'character:'

'Entering an _estanquillo_, or shop licensed to sell cigars, we met two or three faces so decidedly Anglo-Saxon in complexion and feature that we at once accosted them in English, and were answered by one of the party with a drawl and twang so peculiarly 'Down East,' that Marble, Hackett, or Yankee Hill, might have taken lessons from him. We soon ascertained that they belonged to the American circus company then performing at San Luis, and on telling them who we were, they at once invited us to their _meson_ to supper. The first speaker, who proved to be a regular Vermonter, was not a little surprised to see us out without a guard, and asked if we had received permission to that effect. His astonishment was removed when we told him that we were allowed to leave our quarters on parole.

'In five minutes after our arrival at the hotel of the equestrians, I found that our Vermont acquaintance was one of the quaintest specimens of the Yankee race I had ever seen, and not a few examples had I met previous to my encounter with him. He had a droll impediment in his speech which gave to his actions and gestures a turn irresistibly comic, and then he told an excellent story, played the trombone, triangle, and bass viol, spoke Spanish well, drove one of the circus wagons, translated the bills, turned an occasional somerset in the ring, cracked jokes in Spanish with the Mexican clown, took the tickets at the entrance with one hand, while with the other he beat an accompaniment to the orchestra inside on the bass-drum, and, in short, made himself 'generally useful.' After partaking of an excellent supper, we spent an agreeable hour in his room, listening to story after story of his adventures. He 'come out' to Mexico, to use his own words, by way of Chihuahua, accompanying the traders from Jonesborough, on Red River, in the first and only expedition across the immense prairies. They were some six or eight months on the road, and suffered incredible hardships for want of water and provisions. Our Yankee was a stout man when we saw him, but he told us that he was a perfect transparency when he first arrived at the Mexican settlements--so poor, in fact, that according to his own account, 'a person might have read the New-England Primer through him without specs.'

'When ten o'clock came we rose to depart; but the droll genius insisted that we should first partake of a glass of egg-nog with him, and then help him to sing 'Old Hundred' in remembrance of old times. There are few persons in the New-England States who cannot go through this ancient and well-known psalm-tune after some fashion; and although neither time nor place was exactly befitting, we all happened to be from that quarter, and could not resist complying with his comico-serious request. He really had a good voice, and, for aught I know, may have led the singing in his native village church. After humming a little, apparently to get the right pitch, he started off with a full, rich tone; but suddenly checking himself in the middle of the first line, said that the thing was not yet complete. Taking a double-bass from its resting-place in one corner of the room, he soon had the instrument tuned, and then recommenced with this accompaniment. Never have I heard a performance so strangely mingling the grave and the comic. It was odd enough to see one of his vocation in a strange land thus engaged; and then the solemnity and zeal with which he sawed and sang away were perfectly irresistible. I did not laugh; but thoughts arose in my mind very little accordant with the earnest and devotional spirit with which our strange companion went through his share of the performance. This curious scene over, a scene which is probably without a parallel in the history of San Luis Potosi, we took leave of our singular acquaintance, who promised to call at the convent early the next morning, and do every thing in his power to assist those among the Texans who were the most destitute.'

But we have space only for one more extract, an account of certain 'extra observances,' which, in the order of their devotion, the prisoners while in Puebla, introduced into the service of the Catholic church:

'Every Sunday morning, the prisoners confined at Puebla were compelled to attend mass, in chains, at one of the churches. The floors of all the religious establishments of note in Mexico are of stone or marble, without seats of any kind, and those in attendance must either kneel or stand during the ceremonies. In the present instance, the Texans were paraded in rows before the altar, and compelled to fall upon their knees while mass was said; but they were not obliged to go through all the little forms and ceremonies which the Catholic Church in Mexico exacts of its votaries, such as crossing themselves, smiting their breasts, and other outward observances. Well drilled, however, were they in all the minutiae of these demonstrations; and in addition, one of the jokers, who had acted as the prosecuting attorney at San Cristobal, and who was a great mimic, taught them a few original 'extras' and 'fancy touches,' which he had ingrafted upon the regular Catholic ceremonials. So well had he disciplined his brother prisoners, that they could go through all his ritual with as much promptness and precision as could the best military company in existence go through its simplest manoeuvres.

'On arriving at the church, and after kneeling in front of the altar, the well-drilled Texans awaited the usual signal from the officiating priest to commence. There probably was not a Catholic among them; yet the assumed air of grave devotion to be seen in their faces would have done credit to the most rigid of that creed. At the given signal, and at the proper time, the chained prisoners would cross themselves with all seeming humility, closely imitating every motion of the priest and of the Mexicans around them; but instead of stopping with their Catholic neighbors, they wound up by placing the right thumb to the tip of their noses, and then, with a mock gravity which might have drawn a smile from an Egyptian mummy, circled the fingers about, and all this directly in the face of the officiating priest, and without a smile upon their countenances. When the proper time came for again crossing themselves, the mischievous leader of the Texans would pass the word for his men to 'come the double compound action,' as he called it. This resembled the first movement, with the exception that it was more complicated and more mysterious to the surrounding Mexicans. After the right hand had gone its usual round, from forehead to breast and from shoulder to shoulder, the thumb again settled on the tip of the nose; but this time the left thumb was joined to the little finger of the right hand, and then commenced a series of fancy gyrations with all the fingers, the like of which was probably never before seen in a Catholic church. Sam Weller, I believe, or if not he, some modern philosopher of his school, defines the movement I have just described as meaning something like 'This may be all very true, but we don't believe a word of it.' What the Mexicans thought of it, or whether they noticed it or not, I am unable to say: it may be that they considered it as simply 'a way' the Texans had, and thought no more of it. Such is the story told of the pranks played by the prisoners confined in Puebla.'

We must here end our notice of this amusing book. It will be found highly entertaining, and to contain also much information concerning the character of the country through which Mr. KENDALL passed. It will attain a wide popularity, for it is decidedly the best and most readable book of the season. . . . SINCE the foregoing was placed in type, we learn from Mr. KENDALL'S journal, the well known New-Orleans '_Picayune_,' that the tyrant SALAZAR, whose cruelties are recorded in preceding extracts, met recently with an awful death. He escaped from prison at Santa Fe, and fled to the woods, where he was killed and scalped by the Indians, and his body left a prey to wild beasts. Just retribution!

ADDRESS AND POEM, DELIVERED BEFORE THE MECHANIC APPRENTICE'S LIBRARY ASSOCIATION on the twenty-second of February. By FREDERICK W. LINCOLN, Jr., and GEORGE COOLIDGE. Boston: THE ASSOCIATION.

The inculcations of both these performances are excellent; and in a literary point of view, they are also highly creditable to their authors. Mr. Lincoln supports the necessity and dignity of labor with unanswerable argument and felicitous illustrations. Much, says he, in a few segregated sentences, 'has been written, with truth and eloquence, by great minds, upon the dignity of labor; but it is the dignity of _the laborer_ which is the vital point that demands attention. Labor or industry needs no apology, no advocates; it is the very instinct of our being, and one of the first to develop itself; it is only when performed in a peculiar way, or associated with a particular class, that it is considered disreputable. How is this evil to be remedied? Not by assuming a superiority, but by _attaining_ to it. You have it in your power to make the profession of a mechanic as honorable as any avocation in life. The dignity of a profession depends upon the character of those who are in its ranks. If the individual is low or mean, no occupation can confer upon him respectability or regard. On the other hand, no useful employment, however trivial, in the social state, can degrade him who faithfully performs its duties. It is not always the men of genius, those gifted with extraordinary natural endowments, who are the greatest benefactors of our race, or who enjoy in a greater degree personal happiness themselves. WASHINGTON and FRANKLIN were not men of genius, as the world understands that term. It was by probity, industry, perseverance, a well-strung nerve, and an iron will, that they conquered the obstacles before them, and acquired that true greatness which has made their names preeminent among the famous of earth, and their example the inspiration of American youth. Circumstances may do something for us; we can do more for ourselves. We must have faith, we must be in earnest.' The healthful American spirit which pervades the 'Address,' characterizes not less prominently the poem of Mr. COOLIDGE. A passage from this performance, commencing 'List to the Psalm of Labor!' speaks of what we intended our readers should have had an opportunity to 'hearken to;' but the tyranny of space is despotic.

DRAWINGS AND TINTINGS. By ALFRED B. STREET. pp. 48. Albany: W. C. LITTLE. New-York: BURGESS, STRINGER AND COMPANY and M. Y. BEACH.

We cannot aver that we greatly affect the title given by Mr. Street to the collection of Sketches from Nature which we find upon our table; but for the sketches themselves, as our readers well know, we have a cordial affection. Many of them have already been encountered in our pages; and after winning cordial admiration in the journals of the day, they have been arrested as 'fugitives' by their author, brought home, and bound together, preparatory to receiving sentence at the hands of that many-headed monster, the Public. As a careful and minute observer of nature, in every phase of season and change of the hours; from the wide and comprehensive general view, to the most delicate scanning of the aspect of the lowliest shrub or flower; we scarcely know our author's superior, after BRYANT. Our readers, however, are so well acquainted with the marked peculiarities of Mr. STREET'S style, that we shall content ourselves with a single Daguerreotype sketch from 'The School-house:'

'A picture of soft beauty is the scene When painted by the sinking summer sun In tints of light and shade; but winter's gloom Shows nothing but a waste, with one broad track Stamp'd to the humble door-post from the lane; The snow-capp'd wood-pile stretching near the walls; And the half severed log with axe that leans Within the gaping notch.

'The room displays Long rows of desk and bench; the former stain'd And streak'd with blots and trickles of dried ink, Lumbered with maps and slates and well-thumb'd books, And carved with rude initials; while the knife Has hack'd and sliced the latter. In the midst Stands the dread throne whence breathes supreme command, And in a lock'd recess well known, is laid The dread regalia, gifted with a charm Potent to the rebellious. When the bell Tinkles the school hour, inward streams the crowd, And bending heads proclaim the task commenc'd. Upon his throne with magisterial brow The teacher sits, round casting frowning looks As the low giggle and the shuffling foot Betray the covert jest, or idleness. Oft does he call with deep and pompous voice, The class before him, and shrill chattering tones In pert or blundering answers, break the soft And dreamy hum of study, heretofore Like beehive sounds prevailing.'

We could wish to have seen this volume make a more forcible appeal to the eye than it will be likely to do in the pamphlet form; but then it would not have been so widely diffused; and that is a 'compensating' feature, to the producer, which must not be forgotten by writers who would be read; and Mr. STREET _will_ be.

MR. CHEEVER'S LECTURES ON THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, AND ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN BUNYAN. To Number Four, inclusive. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

We have perused these Lectures, as far as they have advanced, not only with unabated but with increasing interest. For many years the Pilgrim's Progress of BUNYAN has been one of our 'standard' take-downable books from our library-shelf; and now that we have 'a new lease' of the imaginations of our early years, in the eager perusal of a second generation, the old feeling of admiration and delight, in following the narrative which records the trials and triumphs of CHRISTIAN, HOPEFUL and FAITHFUL, CHRISTIANA, Mr. GREATHEART and MERCY, comes back upon us in all the freshness of its prime. With a quick eye to all the _pictorial_ beauties, so to speak, of BUNYAN'S matchless limnings, Mr. CHEEVER adds a thorough knowledge and appreciation of all their high spiritual teachings. Moreover, his own doctrinal views have given him a keen scent for the intolerant evils against which BUNYAN warred, and of which he was the victim. We had marked for insertion three or four striking and characteristic passages, in the colloquy between BUNYAN, the Justice who committed him to his twelve years' imprisonment, and the Clerk of the Peace who came to remonstrate with him for his conscientious 'obstinacy;' but are compelled to omit them for the present. These passages, however, like his entire life, illustrate this eloquent sketch of Mr. CHEEVER:

'He kept on his course, turning neither to the right hand nor the left, in his MASTER'S service, but he made all ready for the tempest, and familiarized himself to the worst that might come, be it the prison, the pillory, or banishment, or death. With a magnanimity and grandeur of philosophy which none of the princes or philosophers or sufferers of this world ever dreamed of, he concluded that 'the best way to go through suffering, is to trust in GOD through CHRIST as touching the world to come; and as touching this world to be dead to it, to give up all interest in it, to have the sentence of death in ourselves and admit it, to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption, thou art my father; and to the worm, thou art my mother and sister; that is, to familiarize these things to me.' With this preparation, when the storm suddenly fell, though the ship at first bowed and labored heavily under it, yet how like a bird did she afterward flee before it! It reminds me of those two lines of Wesley:

'The tempests that rise. Shall gloriously hurry our souls to the skies!'

So BUNYAN'S bark sped onward, amidst howling gales, with rattling hail and thunder, but onward, still onward, and upward, still upward, to heaven!'

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE INNER LIFE OF MAN.--We are indebted to the kindness of an esteemed friend who was present at the recent delivery of a lecture before the 'Young Men's Society' of Newark, New-Jersey, by Mr. CHARLES HOOVER, upon '_The Inner Life of Man_,' for a few passages from that admirable performance, which may be relied upon as very nearly identical with the language that fell from the lips of the speaker. We cannot but hope, on behalf of our citizens, that Mr. HOOVER may be invited to repeat his lecture in this city. Surely, its enlarged views, its benign inculcations, its tender remonstrances, are needed among us; nor will the good seed fall altogether upon stony ground, nor be utterly choked by the tares that abound in our field of bustling and busy existence. 'But what,' the reader may ask, 'is this inner, higher life, concerning which we hear so much in these latter days?' Let Mr. HOOVER make answer: 'IT is that ethereal, spiritual nature, which by an incarnation only less mysterious than that of the SON of GOD, is in present temporary alliance and partnership with our animal nature; which, itself imperishable and immortal, measures the cycle of its probation burthened with a dead body. It is that in man which loves the beautiful and the good, which expands and warms to the breathing and the voice of love; which, like the child listening to the murmuring sea-shell, catches the far-off sound of the solemn future, and hears celestial harmonies in silentest hours. It is that which in infancy gathers in its first excursion the stuff that infant dreams are made of; which in childhood makes the welkin ring with joy and laughter, crowns itself with flowers, and arches life and the world, and all inaccessible things and places, with airy bridges; which sees angel-forms in flitting clouds, and in the gorgeous glory of setting suns beholds the vestibule and drapery of other worlds: which holds communion with flowers as things of life, and with birds as beautiful and gentle friends; which rebounds like a liberated bow from the touch of grief to the freedom of joy, and sees in its own tear-drop a perfect rainbow. To the inner life of man, in its gradual and successive unfoldings, belong those deep musings of the heart, which suggested perhaps by trifles light as air, become mighty, like pent-up fires in a mountain's bosom, and tossing off the superincumbent pressure, burst forth in a flame of patriotism to unyoke a nation, or in heroic religious love to bless a world. In the inner life of man are born and nurtured those deep and intense affections which make a man willing to die for his country, his faith, and his friends; which purified, lift him up an angel; which poisoned, burn to hell, and turn him into a fiend; there rise the fountains of generous sensibility; there dawn hope and love, and reverence and faith; there yearn the immortal desires of continued existence and eternal joy; there is the chamber of prophetic visions and poetic fires; there conscience holds its court, and in God's stead utters its solemn decision. There too the acutest of our sensibilities to suffering reside. . . . AND this inner, spiritual nature of man is his distinguishing glory, the priceless, inalienable treasure which he carries with him amid all the changes of time, and all the disasters of the universe. It is his all. It is his proper self. Other things are circumstances of his being. This is his being, subsisting independently of every other thing and being except the DEITY. It invests all external objects with its own character and coloring; paints its own image on the sky, the floods, the fields, and faces of men, and turns the world into a thousand-faced mirror, and every face flings back upon the soul its own likeness, and all its flitting, changeful phases of mood and feeling. Is it guilty? 'The fiends of its own bosom people air with kindred fiends that hunt it to despair.' Is it sad? The sighing of the softest breeze is heard as a requiem, and the natural beatings of its own heart sound like 'funeral marches and muffled drums.' Is it glad, innocent, and happy? All nature smiles and puts on the garments of beauty; the stars sing together, the trees of the forest rejoice, and the floods clap their hands. Thus the visible universe becomes a mere reproduction of the spirit of man that beholds it. Create a mind, and it creates for its residence an external world of its own hue and character. Make that mind happy, and its external world, from pole to pole and from the zenith to its centre, is resplendent with light and beauty; balm-like airs, soft and fragrant as those of uncursed Eden, breathe upon it, and all its life is love. Dreaming, it sees a ladder reaching to heaven, and the angels of GOD ascending and descending on errands of mercy, and waking, exclaims with reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head. Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, in the 'silent, secret sessions' of thought, and in the glow of individual feeling, in the field, at the fire-side, in the closet, or on the sleepless bed, there is man's history: there, unfolding to act, or infolding itself to die, the soul is in its greatness, is in labor with itself, and struggling with big, burning thoughts, and 'truths that wake to perish never;' decreeing with solemn form and force what is to be done, and what endured. Let no man despise what is revolved in the private mind.'

We scarcely know which most to admire, the nervous thoughts embodied in the following passage, or the fervent and beautiful language in which a just reproof is conveyed:

'IN all our wanderings round this world of care, we have been deeply moved and amazed at the fact, that down into the world of troubled, sorrowing mind and tortured sensibilities, the professors and light-bearers of the religion of JESUS have thrown so few of its melting beams. Of transcendent mysteries this is not the least, that of those who hold to a religion that is comprehended in one burning word, one transforming principle, LOVE; which is not a theory, but a divine passion, and whose hopes all rest on the doctrine of forgiveness; so few practically and heartily pity, forgive, and love the erring and the wretched of the family of man. Oh! it was not thus when PITY, eighteen hundred years ago, habited as a man, and leaning upon a pilgrim's staff, set out from the brow of Nazareth to the hill of Calvary, tracing with tearful eye and weary foot the roads of Judea and the streets of Jerusalem! . . . IN an age which, in sorrow not in anger, in heart-felt regret, not in bitterness, we are compelled to regard as extensively pseudo-philanthropic; when a vaunting benevolence is current, which hovers every where and alights no where; which loves all men in general and no man in particular; profuse of pity to the heathen, while bloated with poisonous hate to its neighbor; it is refreshing to see occasional instances of practical brotherhood with poor, down-trodden, benumbed and forsaken humanity. That is true benevolence, which with mingled faith, reverence, and love, descends in quest of the inner life beneath repulsive appearances, and tainted name, and shattered fortune, and from the depths brings up a bleeding heart, a scathed soul, and speaks to it of hope and consolation, and cheers it up to the purpose of self-recovery, and the recommencement of a virtuous life, and the reconstruction of a broken, blasted fame; that rekindles with vestal care its dying fires, and like a pious mother, nurses it through weakness, infirmity, irresolution, and despondency, back to hale strength and vigor; that by a generous confidence in its earliest repentings, and a generous forgiveness of its gravest faults, lends strength to its purposes and permanence to its reform. Oh! there are such hearts all around us, still warm and beating, though pierced through with many sorrows, goaded it may be at once by a sense of guilt and the horrors of abandonment, yet not dead to virtue, nay, sensitively alive to it; 'for as certain flowers open only in the night, so often in the dark hours of a great sorrow the human soul first opens to the light of the eternal stars.' There _are_ such hearts buried all around us; and from their unquiet graves come up the low wail, the stifled sob, the muttered curse, the anguished prayer, appealing to the thoughtless brotherhood above them for a ray of light, and a breath of the free air of heaven! Hearken, and ye shall hear the tones of an eternal _miserere_, mingling and swelling like distant organ-peals, drowned by the din of day-light, but re-heard in all hours of thought and stillness, in all places of meditative retirement. Listen, and ye shall hear soliloquies of the heart with itself, revealing pleasant memories and hopes, and tendernesses and joys, that come up from the past in shadowy troops, with lights and garlands--and vanish, making the darkness more visible and solitude more hideous. Blessed, we say, for Heaven has said it, blessed are they whose ministry of love is in that unquiet inner world; whose sympathies intertwine themselves with its strained, snapped fibres and ligaments; whose hand gently withdraws the barbed arrows of outrageous fortune, and into the ragged wound pours the oil of consolation and the balm of joy! Select, sacred, and heaven-ordained and anointed priests and priestesses they, of a GOD of love in a world of sorrow. Not their commission is it to declare to cowering criminals a GOD wrathful, vindictive, and scarcely less bloody than the Druid's deity, hating with infinite venom the unhappy violator of his laws; not theirs to deal out curious metaphysics and cold abstractions, giving a stone for bread and an adder for an egg to the sons of sorrow and the daughters of misfortune; but to inspire hope in the desponding and peace in the troubled bosom; to give light for darkness, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; to bring back the lost to their FATHER'S house, and raise the dead to life again.'

A BRACE OF PELLETS FROM 'JULIAN.'--Not one of our readers, we will venture to say, has forgotten the spiritual JULIAN, whose 'Top of New-York,' and the inquiry concerning 'the law' between man and wife, in regard to getting up first in the morning, attracted so much attention and remark two or three months since. We annex two late paper-pellets of his brain; and must ask the reader to admire with us the fervent feeling of new paternity wreaked upon expression in the first, and the ease and simplicity of style which mark the unstudied sketch that succeeds it: 'HAVE you ever any nervous days, my kind EDITOR? Nervous, beyond publishing days, or the want of copy; beyond excesses, the reaction of excitement, fast-days, and the giving of thanks?--for these last are animal only, and for such, doctors are made and abound every where. The cure for them you may get in a brown-paper parcel; it is buyable; and of late it is eatable; you may take it in a lozenge. But the days of which I speak are such as you must endure patiently unto the end. 'They come like shadows, so depart,' but the cloud that gives the shadow is beyond your reach. A new doubt or apprehension, or an old one with an uglier face than usual; a hideousness not before seen, a devilishness of malice flashing upon you for the first time, or even an unkind word, added to your previous gathering of materiel, may tip the balance of your pleasant thoughts, and then, all colors changing into one, the black cloud rolls over you, and dark thoughts, wholly foreign to your nature, throng round and stab at you, till at last, by that old snakish sympathy of excitement, your own dark passions rise and embrace them, and the sensitive guardians of the brain, mingling in the fray, give you up, one by one, captive to the devil. In the lighter hours of the day, the dead hopes of the Past, the beauties of other days, throng round you, and shake their dry bones; and oh, what efforts at sprightliness! what ravishing of graces! what whirling and rattling of bare bones, as they waltz round to that music of other days! And now, born of these, comes another group, with the laughing eye of young years and a full heart; and ah! the tempting lip, the heaving bosom, the light step of the perfect form; ha! ha! there is life, there is beauty in the world again! But then will they betray you? Will they grow old and ugly? Will they live to mock at you? And now the words, 'No you don't, you can't come it,' tremble upon your lips; but then, oh! the delight of giving up to it; going the whole, the entire, the unclipt, the blind-folded, the universal; 'ha! ha! come to my heart, my beauties!' and with open arms you stagger to their embraces. But in that long, long, kiss, with the hot breath of passion, and the bounding blood and brain reeling to madness, there is the bitterness of death. _Dust and ashes!_--take them away. . . . THE drop too much in all this is, that you get no sympathy from others; it is quite too personal, too exclusive for that. Whereas, in the solemnities of New-Year's, and in all the concernments of that day, the whole world beareth company. Not but that we have occasion for all our bravery, our greetings and rejoicings; it is well to affect that, for there is a strange man about town, all that day, and a _disci mori_ whispered about the streets; and although we pretend not to know, or to hear him, there is one at our house who hath let him in; and all day long is he parleying and protesting and offering refreshments, forsooth, to that unwelcome visitor. But there is a pleasure in the assurance that the cunning of our neighbors shall not avail more than ours with his impertinence; that he shall be stabbed under the fifth rib, that he shall wince under his hits, his jokes, his stinging rebuke! There is also something companionable in the thought, that we are not alone in this onward movement of years, this stern necessity of motion, this tread-mill step! No one can defalcate in this particular; no one can Texas-ize and be quit of his transgressions and his onward travel. But millions of our own kith and kin travel the same way; England goes with us; Europe goes with us; and let not the indolent Turk dream that he is becalmed the while; let not the exclusives of the rising sun imagine that they in their nearness to Heaven do not, nevertheless, whirl on in the general motion, even as the outer barbarians! Decidedly, they _do_; their somersets avail not, and the edicts of the great Ching-poo are astounded at their non-effect. This is one pleasant reflection born of New-Year's; beside, it would be amusing, if one could laugh at any thing so sad, to observe the humors of the few who think upon the bearings of that solemn time. In the year to be, there are many to come, many to go, and but few to tarry; yet _all_ have their ambitions of a life-time; those even, to whom the stars have grown dim, and life become almost a mockery under Heaven, dashing into the coming day with something of the old zest; while the many, the _oi polloi_, who have not yet made their grand move, are now ready, and think that therefore the earth is to take a new route in creation; forgetting that the old round must be the round for ever. Nights sleepless with joy, nights sleepless with pain, nights long with watching, feverish thought; crime that stings like an adder, and nights short with perfect rest; days long and weary, days bright and dashing, hot and cold, wet and dry, and days and nights with all of these--as hath been in the time that's past, and will be in the time to come.

'There is something very pitiable in these humors, Mr. EDITOR; indeed very laughable, if your mouth is shaped to that effect; but as it happens with me to-night, my mouth refuses to twitch except in one direction. Its corners have what Prof. P---- used to call the 'downward tendencies.' Perhaps it is because this is with me the anniversary of a day upon the events of which are hanging the movements of all after-life; it may be this, and there may be thereto added the coloring of a winter's day. The wind howls about the house-tops, and the air pierces like needles; even the stars, when they look down in thousands, as the rack goes by, seem to shiver in their high places; yet perhaps there is nothing so personal in all that, considering that just so the wind howled last night, and may for a month to come; but oh! as I am a nervous man, and look back upon the circling months, and feel the sting here and the stab there, in that galvanic battery; and as I look forward with eager eye, and ear open to the faintest whisper of the dim to-morrow, it is not as the stars shiver from excess of light, but with a shudder at the heart from the cooler blood of----Good night, my kind EDITOR; that sentence is quite too long already, and there are some things too personal to tell.

* * * * *

'P. S.--Whoop! hurrah! Light upon the world again! Where are you, my fine EDITOR? I say Sir, I was an ass--do you hear?--an _ass_, premature, wise before my time, a brute, a blockhead! Did I talk of dust and ashes? Oh! Sir, I lied multitudinously. Every nerve, every muscle that didn't try to strangle me in that utterance, _lied_. No, Sir; let me tell you it's a great world; glorious--magnificent; a world that can't be beat! Talk of the stars and a better world, but don't invite me there yet. Make my regrets, my apology to Death, but say that I can't come; 'positive engagement; happy some other time, but not now.' Oh, no; this morning is quite too beautiful to leave; and beside, I would rather stay, if only to thank GOD a little longer for this glorious light, this pure air that can echo back my loudest hurrah. And then, my boy----But haven't I told you? Why Sir, I've got a boy!--_a boy_--ha, ha! I shout it out to you--A BOY; fourteen pounds, and the mother a great deal _better_ than could be expected! And I say, Mr. EDITOR, it's _mine!_ hurrah and hallelujah forever! Oh, Sir! such legs, and such arms, and such a head!--and Oh my GOD! _he has his mother's lips!_ I can kiss them forever! And then, Sir, look at his feet, his hands, his chin, his eyes, his every thing, in fact--so '_perfectly O. K.!_' Give me joy, Sir; no you needn't either. I am full now; I run over; and they say that I ran over a number of old women, half killed the mother, pulled the doctor by the nose, and upset a 'pothecary-shop in the corner; and then didn't I ring the tea-bell? Didn't I blow the horn? Didn't I dance, shout, laugh, and cry altogether? The women say they had to tie me up. I don't believe _that_; but who is going to shut his mouth when he has a live baby? You should have heard his lungs, Sir, at the first mouthful of fresh air--such a burst! A little tone in his voice, but not pain; excess of joy, Sir, from too great sensation. The air-bath was so sudden, you know. Think of all his beautiful machinery starting off at once in full motion; all his thousand outside feelers answering to the touch of the cool air; the flutter and crash at the ear; and that curious contrivance the eye, looking out wonderingly and bewildered upon the great world, so glorious and dazzling to his unworn perceptions; his net-work of nerves, his wheels and pulleys, his air-pumps and valves, his engines and reservoirs; and within all, that beautiful fountain, with its jets and running streams dashing and coursing through the whole length and breadth, without stint, or pause--making altogether, Sir, exactly fourteen pounds!

'Did I ever talk brown to you, Sir, or blue, or any other of the devil's colors? You say I have. Beg your pardon, Sir, but you--are mistaken in the individual. I am this day, Sir, multiplied by two. I am duplicate. I am number one of an indefinite series, and there's my continuation. And you observe, it is not a block, nor a block-head, nor a painting, nor a bust, nor a fragment of any thing, however beautiful; but a combination of _all_ the arts and sciences in one; painting, sculpture, music (hear him cry,) mineralogy, chemistry, mechanics (see him kick,) geography, and the use of the globes (see him nurse;) and withal, he is a perpetual motion--a time-piece that will never run down! And who wound it up? But words, Sir, are but a mouthing and a mockery. . . . WHEN a man is nearly crushed under obligations, it is presumed that he is unable to speak; but he may bend over very carefully, for fear of falling, nod in a small way, and say nothing; and then, if he have sufficient presence of mind to lay a hand upon his heart, and look down at an angle of forty-five degrees, with a motion of the lips--unuttered poetry--showing the wish and inability, it will be (well done) very gracefully expressive. With my boy in his first integuments, I assume that position, make the small nod aforesaid, and leave you the poetry unuttered.'

'ODD-ZOUNDS!' thought we, on glancing at the subject of the ensuing piscatory epistle, 'what can all this outcry mean?' But that exclamatory query we shall permit JULIAN himself to answer, in his own peculiar way:

'GAMMON!' said HARRY. 'Wait a moment,' said I; 'I shall throw sixes;' and to be sure down came the sixes, striking him on the 'seize' point, and then rebounding to my own, swept every man from the table. The board was put up, and after a little closing chat with Mrs. H----, I was taking leave, when HARRY called me back. 'JULIAN,' said he, 'Come and breakfast to-morrow upon 'Zounds and Sounds.'' 'Zounds and Sounds!' said I, 'I shall be delighted! What a charming dish! I remember of----' 'And JULE,' said HARRY, interrupting me, 'perhaps FANNY would come?' 'Oh, impossible! you know she is delicate yet, and the mornings are quite chilly.' 'Well, good night; and don't forget that we breakfast _early_.' 'My dear Sir,' said I, 'I could rise at cock-crow for Zounds and Sounds.' . . . Now, I had never even heard the words before; but I pique myself on knowing strange and choice dishes; not the far-fetched things of the French, but things good _per se_, and without a sea of condiments; the delicate, the rare subtleties which our own women know so well to compound. Of course, I _ought_ to know Zounds and Sounds, and of course, I should not hurry to disclaim that knowledge. HARRY might have known, and then again he might _not_; but he remembered, as I have since ascertained, of having eaten something of the kind some thirty years since; something he had perhaps cloyed of, and so forgotten, but something very delectable; something that would perhaps touch his palate again like the maple-sugar and other dainties of his boyhood. Having found the article that day, he had secured a large quantity without asking what they were, and had them taken privately to his house, with a view of making up the dish himself. I came home, rolling the magic words 'as a sweet morsel under my tongue,' and immediately sought out a curious dictionary, in which various strange things are expounded; and failing in that, looked into CRABBE'S Synonymes, (by the rule of contraries, I suppose, for there certainly could be nothing _like_ Zounds and Sounds,) but as LONGFELLOW says, 'All in vain!' FANNY having retired, I got into my slippers and sat down by the fire to ruminate a little. 'Zounds and Sounds!' said I. 'What an incomparable phrase! What a sweet suffusion of the z! What vibratory tingling upon the tympanum! How pleasantly percussive to the brain; and how even the teeth partake of the sensation! I declare! I must write a song upon Zounds and Sounds! I will. I will write an invitatory song to the EDITOR. Let me see. Zounds, rounds, bounds and hounds. Exactly! Now then:

ARE you weary Sir, of the ups and downs The fame, the fun, the blues the browns, The heat, the haste, the sights the sounds Of your never-ending monthly rounds? Oh! come and dine on Zounds and Sounds! Zounds and Sounds! Glorious sounds! The music, alone, With only a bone, Is a dinner, Sir, with Zounds and Sounds.

Don't ask me, Sir, upon what grounds I promise that these rare compounds Exactly as the song propounds, (The music alone, With only a bone,) Shall drive your troubles past all bounds, Or mad thoughts chasing you like hounds; Don't ask me _how_ it drives and drowns, But come and dine on Zounds and Sounds.

Finishing the song, I looked about for my flute to find a tune for it, but reflecting that I should wake the house, put it by again for another time. 'After all,' said I, 'a flute couldn't touch that _z_ sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew's-harp? Ay, that's the thing! A Jew's-harp has something like it; and so--so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are--Yes,' said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, 'Zounds and Sounds are _bumble-bees_!--bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man call that bee 'humble;' he is _bumble_, most decidedly!' And with this thought I hurried off to bed. . . . It may have been an hour afterward, while I was in the maze between sleeping and waking, that the words 'Zounds and Sounds' escaped me, unawares. 'What's that?' said FANNY, starting up. 'Are you sure that I spoke?' said I. 'Indeed, I am; you said something about going down town.' 'Did I? Well, I forgot to tell you. I _am_ going down town; so you must not be surprised at my rising early to-morrow. I think of breakfasting out.' 'You think! I should think you did; thinking aloud, and asleep too! Don't think so again, dear; you woke me out of a sound sleep.' . . . AT an early hour the next morning, I was at my friend's house. _How_ I got there, I do not now remember; but I have a distinct recollection of a ringing sensation in my head, and of not being quite sure that I was awake, till the romping of a dozen children, and a buzzing sound every where of Zounds and Sounds aroused me to a full sense of the great treat that was coming. Then it was that I sang the last night's song, and it took immensely, especially with the children. HARRY was not there to hear it, and lost that pleasure, (as I have never repeated it,) unless he heard it in the kitchen, where he was superintending the burden of the song. Shortly after, came the call of 'breakfast,' and we all walked in, at least fifteen of us, and took seats at the table before the Zounds and Sounds were brought in. HARRY was already seated at the head. Presently the Zounds came in, piping hot; but before they had reached the table, HARRY turned to me and asked if I had any preference. 'Have you taken the stingers out?' said I, thinking of bumble-bees. 'Stingers!' said HARRY. 'Oh, I beg your pardon,' said I; 'only a joke;' and making a bold guess at some white things that now appeared on the table, added, 'A little of the breast.' HARRY smiled, but said nothing. Plates were now served all around. Breakfast went on, and Zounds and Sounds went down, and every body appeared to be perfectly charmed with the dish. One might say, to be sure, that they were a little saltish, and then again, with that exception, there was no remarkable flavor; but that might be the rarity, _not to have any flavor_. No one, however, thought _aloud_ in this manner. On the contrary, there was a manifest inclination to detect resemblances of taste and flavor to those of very many rare and delicate cookeries; but after awhile _there came a pause_. It was during this pause, that my friend turned to his wife and inquired if she was quite sure they were seasoned properly. 'I think they are a little salt,' said Mrs. H----; but, my dear, you know you prepared them yourself.' HARRY looked thunder-clouds, and called one of the servants. 'Mary,' said he, 'take the key and bring me a _raw Zound_. You will find two buckets-full in the wine-cellar.' Wondering at this, we wondered still more at finding our coffee-cups all empty at the same time. Each one was waiting for _drink_. The raw Zound was now brought, and HARRY, plunging his fork into it, while all eyes were fixed upon him, turned it over and over, examining it on all sides, and then, with his arm at a right angle, raised it deliberately to his nose. Almost instantaneously, and while still some distance off, there came a very wise expression about his nostrils, which, as the Zound came nearer, dilated still more and more, deepening the expression to a frightful extent, till, all doubts removed, he shouted out: '_Codfish! by thunder!_'

We had actually taken within us, and bepraised, the unfreshened _tongues and bladders_ of codfish!

It is now more than a week, O EDITOR! since this breakfast came off, or rather since it went down, for it isn't _off_ yet; even now, that taste----Do you know what it is, Sir, to have your jaws hang?--to be always on the eve of a gape?--to be afraid of the tongs or the snuffers, or a tall man, especially in tights, lest the next yawn may wholly tear up your spinous process, your spheroid cartilage?--hang the doctors!--do you understand? Well; _I am in that way_; and it's all from those confounded Zounds and Sounds!

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.--Coming home lateish to-night from the opera, we found the following, written in what Mrs. MALAPROP would term 'rather ineligible characters,' as if hastily reduced to paper. Howbeit, we knew it at once for the 'hand-write' of our favorite, facile and felicitous historian of Tinnecum. He is one of your persons now who thinks, and not a member of that hum-drum class who only _think_ they think; moreover, he knows 'how to observe' better even than Miss MARTINEAU. It was an every-day thing which struck him, in the aspect of our winter-sleighs, as he rode up in one of them a day or two ago; but this sketch of '_The Snow-Omnibus_' is not so common: 'PAST midnight! The embers are dying. The thunder of the city becomes a dull roar, the roar a murmur: then comes a dead pause, interrupted sometimes by the watchman's club as it rings on the pavement, or the shrill, solitary whistler executing the threadbare airs of the opera, or 'Life on the Ocean Wave.' The door opens without noise. I lift up my nodding head and see Dr. BARTOLO, his hat like a miller's, and his whiskers fringed with white. With tread soft as a mouse or an apparition, he illumes his candle, turns on his heel, and says in a whisper very appropriate to the time, the place, and the fact conveyed: 'It snows!' Such is the only intimation to break the magic and the mystery of the early morning, unless it be the small tinkling of bells like frogs in a brook; a complete shifting or rather change of scene noiselessly wrought; a foul city purified, whitened, sparkling, and glorious, like a Scarlet Lady who emerges with her meretricious charms in chaste robes, chaste as Diana. She taketh the veil. The virgin-snow is unsullied upon her bosom, just as it dropped softly out of heaven, undefiled by footsteps, dazzling only to conceal. 'Tis but the momentary semblance of purity. The sun is up. Hark! the tumult and excitement is begun. The crowds throng and jostle through the pure element; the horses prance to the gay and perpetual chimes, and Broadway is the paradise of belles. Underneath all is the obscenity of filth! What attracts our attention, however, is your snow-omnibus, very different in looks, spirit and animation from the same lumbering carriage upon wheels. What do you see in the latter? A set of cross, hungry-looking men, going up town to dinner, packed together in a magnetizing attitude, with knees jammed against knees, and eyes wherever they can find a place to put them; women crushed between stout fellows, and indecently nudged at every apology of a jolt; in short, a penthouse of ill-humour; twelve '_all full_' people; whiskerandi, gentle maidens, wives, and 'live widders,' ranged with solemn regularity like coffins in a vault. All fix their eyes where their minds are, on vacuity, and try to _be_ for the time present, what they _seem_ to be, as stupid as the devil, as if they dreaded some sympathetic contact, revealing bank-frauds and transactions in stocks. Who ever saw a smile in an omnibus, even when court-plasters have changed places? You might as well look into a slow-driven hearse for something sunshiny! Your broker dares not even chuckle. Your exquisite cannot resort for consolation to the suction of his cane, but all look grim and virtuous as Seneca, until they pull the leather, pass up six-pence through the port-hole, and as they open the door, their faces begin to expand, but only with the animal anticipation of dinner. Compare this with the _grouping_ and animation of the Sleigh-omnibus; heads piled upon heads, as in a picture; black hats, feathers, plumage, barrel-caps, etc., bobbing about in a lively manner to the music of bells. Down they go into the gullies, through thick and thin, with a ludicrous contrast and juxtaposition of faces; all forced in spite of themselves to give expression to their several humors, mirth, deviltry, or spleen. Cheeks glow, eyes shine, spectacles sparkle, glances fly impudently to the windows where the face of beauty presses against the cold pane. The runner sinks into a 'rut,' and that makes the company bow to each other, and gives that old rascal of a sexegenarian an excuse to bring his gray whiskers very near to the blooming visage of a girl whose charming modesty is shrined in colors more delicate than the blush on the cheek of a magnum-bonum plum. Sixty must not aspire after such fruitage; but in an _omnibus_, where's the harm? But we have a remark to make on _nosology_, or the noses of the group. So spicy a variety of folk cheek-by-jowl (Parthians and Elamites, Medes, Jews and Persians,) begets contrast. Nose-bridges of all styles show their peculiar architecture, Roman or Grecian; while straight, crooked, bottle, snub, pug; some flat and with no bridge at all, others very much _abridged_; are brought together in an amicable jostling, 'comparing themselves by themselves,' and setting off one another as a rose sets off a geranium. While I point out these peculiarities to my friend PHIZ, a coral shriek rends the air, and by heavens! the whole load is upset!' . . . WE hear from all quarters 'good exclamation' on the _Directions for Sonnet-Making_, from the popular pen of our friend 'T. W. P.' in our last number. An eastern correspondent, however, questions the correctness of one assumption of the writer: 'It would be well to avoid coupling such words as moon and spoon; breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and stove; hope and soap; all of which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously.' Our correspondent thinks that this decree was issued without due reflection; and he proceeds to substantiate his position by 'the ocular proof:'

SONNET.

THROUGH hazy clouds, scarce ruffled by the breeze, Methought, last night, I saw _the man i' th' moon_; As in the hollow bowl of silver spoon A broad reflected face the gazer sees; (Who trifling, dinner done, with bread and cheese, Abstractly lifts the spoon aforesaid up;) Or the same thing beholds in polished cup, Or concave snuff-box, whence the vocal sneeze! Sight of _the man_ suggested HOTSPUR'S boast; But the night froze; and to express such hope Sounded far softer than the softest soap To me, who rather chose my heels to toast In the warm vicinage of glowing stove, Than pluck the moon's-man's nose, beneath the frigid JOVE![5]

[5] _Sub dio._--HOR.

* * * * *

IF there be not a fruitful lesson in the subjoined, which we venture to separate from its context in a recent letter from an esteemed friend and contributor, then we--are mistaken: 'APROPOS of 'American Ptyalism,' in your March number: a friend was telling me the other day of the agonies he had suffered from dispensing with the use of tobacco. He had used it in various ways for thirty years, but finding that he was breaking _down_ under it, he broke _off_ abruptly, about a year ago. 'Let a tobacco-chewer,' said he, 'who wishes to know what _nerves_ are, abstain for only one day, and if he has a wife who is delicate and nervous, he will forever after look upon her with a sympathy that he never felt before. Why, Sir, for months after I had forsworn tobacco, my mouth and jaws were any thing but flesh and bone. They were fire, ice, and prussic-acid, alternately. The roof of my mouth would at one moment have the feeling of blistering, and the next of freezing; and in addition to that, needles would occasionally pierce my face in every imaginable way. My head, for the most part, was a large hogshead with a bumble-bee in it, and the bung stopped up. You know that I am not imaginative; but my teeth, Sir, would suddenly grow to the length of a mastodon's, and perhaps five minutes after, (if at the table,) a narcotic deadness would take the place of the previous excitement, and I would seem to be mumbling my food like people whose teeth are gone. But in the street, I always seemed to be grinning at every body, like some horrible beast who couldn't get his mouth shut. If you have ever stayed _agape_ for an hour or so, while the doctor was on his way to reset your jaws, you can imagine how distressingly _public_ that feeling is. One bitter cold night I woke on the cellar-stairs, having got that far in search of tobacco, in my night-dress. Did you ever do so? You may think it trifling; but whenever from any cause you have become nervous, the first night that you wake on the cellar-stairs in the dark will be something to remember. At another time I dreamed of dying. I had been long sick and had wasted to a mere nothing; but having had abundant time to prepare for death, I flattered myself that I was quite ready to go; and indeed, my hold upon life was so feeble, (a slight change in the weather would have snapped it, so it seemed,) my very breath was so fluttering and unsatisfactory, that I thought it would be as well perhaps to have done with it. The faces of friends, and the out-door world, with all its many goings-on, were pleasant to behold, but _faintly_ so--indistinctly; my pulsations had gone down to such extreme tenuity, that the effort of getting at a pleasure killed it. But I was mistaken; for just before dying, the thought of my cigars came to me like a blessing; and although my physician told me I had but a few moments to live, I would not be refused. A cigar was brought; I seized it in my bony fingers, held it up to the light, smelt of it, and fondled it till the light was brought; and then, with what little grace my strength would allow, I inhaled that divine tobacco! How complacently, as far as I was able, did I then look around upon my surviving friends! My eyes, however, closed very soon from languor, and my breath now coming only at rather long intervals, the puffs were far between; notwithstanding which, I lived it through to the last inspiration; but in the closing draught, the fire from the cigar burnt my mouth so badly that I--awoke, and found I had actually bitten my lip in a most shocking manner! Well, Sir, you may think it was pleasant _not_ to be dying, and so it was; but as I then felt, I think I would sooner have gone, if I could have taken with me the fragrance of that incomparable regalia.'' . . . OUR new friend, the writer of the '_Lines to an Early Robin_,' who desires us to send him six numbers of the KNICKERBOCKER containing his article, inquires 'which kind of his writing we should prefer, prose or poetry?' We hardly know what to say, in answer to this categorical query. It will not perhaps be amiss, however, to adopt the _in medio tutissimus ibis_ style of the traveller, who, upon calling for a cup of tea at breakfast, handed it back to the servant, after tasting it, with the remark: 'If this is tea, bring me coffee--if it is coffee, bring me tea; _I want a change_.' If what 'M.' sends us is poetry, let him send us prose; if it is prose, (and it certainly 'has that look,') let him send us poetry, by all means. . . . JUDGES and other legal functionaries, though ostensibly 'sage, grave men,' are oftentimes sad wags, and fond of fun and frolic. From one of this class we derive the annexed: 'A few months since, in a neighboring town, a knight of the yard-stick was paying his addresses to a Miss INCHES, who, beside some personal attraction, was reputed to be mistress of a snug fortune. At first, the lady encouraged his addresses, but afterward jilted him. Rendered desperate by his double loss, the young man went home and deliberately shot himself; and the coroner's jury next morning brought in a verdict of '_Died by Inches_!'' . . . HOW very beautiful are these lines upon the death of a young and lovely girl, the bloom of whose fair cheek refused to wither at the blighting touch of the Destroyer:

'HER eye-lids as in sleep were closed, Her brow was white like snow; A smile still lingered on her cheek, As if 'twas loth to go!

'And it may be a smile so sweet, So quiet and serene, Was never on the healthy brow Of living maiden seen.

'Perchance the wondrous bliss which burst Upon her raptured mind, When first she woke in glory's courts, Now left its trace behind.

'Her end was peace. I thought that they Who loved her, should not grieve; For these last words they heard her say, 'My spirit, LORD, receive!'

'And when they laid her in the earth, Her cheek still held the bloom; That smile so sweet, the gentle maid Bore with her to the tomb.

'Think it not strange that brighter tints Upon the blossoms crept, Which grew above the sacred spot Where that meek maiden slept.'

* * * * *

WE scarcely know when we have been more amused, than in reading lately a satirical sketch, entitled '_The House of Mourning: a Farce_.' Squire HAMPER and his lady, personages rather of the rustic order, who have come up to London from the family seat in the country, in the progress of shopping in a street at the west end of the metropolis, stop at a dry-goods undertakers, with a hatchment, and '_Maison de Deuil_,' or House of Mourning, by way of a sign over the door. 'Mason de Dool!' exclaims the Squire, responding to his wife's translation; 'some foreign haberdasher's, I 'spose.' The lady, however, coaxes him to go in; for although she has lost no friends, she longs to see the 'improvements in mourning,' which she can do by 'cheapening a few articles, and buying a penny-worth of black pins.' The worthy pair enter, take an ebony chair at the counter, while a clerk in a suit of sables addresses the lady, and in sepulchral tones inquires if he 'can have the melancholy pleasure of serving her.' 'How deep would you choose to go, Ma'am? Do you wish to be very poignant? We have a very extensive assortment of family and complimentary mourning. Here is one, Ma'am, just imported; a widow's silk, watered, as you perceive, to match the sentiment. It is called the 'Inconsolable,' and is very much in vogue in Paris for matrimonial bereavements.' 'Looks rather flimsy, though,' interposes the Squire; 'not likely to last long, eh, Sir?' 'A little slight, praps,' replies the shopman; 'rather a delicate texture; but mourning ought not to last forever, Sir.' 'No,' grumbles the Squire; 'it seldom does, 'specially the violent sorts.' 'As to mourning, Ma'am,' continues the shopman, addressing the lady, 'there has been a great deal, a very great deal indeed, this season; and several new fabrics have been introduced, to meet the demand for fashionable tribulation, and all in the French style; they of France excel in the _funebre_. Here for instance is an article for the deeply-afflicted; a black crape, expressly adapted to the profound style of mourning; makes up very sombre and interesting. Or, if you prefer to mourn in velvet, here's a very rich one; real Genoa, and a splendid black; we call it the 'Luxury of Woe.' It's only eighteen shillings a yard, and a superb quality; fit, in short, for the handsomest style of domestic calamity.' Here the Squire wants to know 'whether sorrow gets more superfine as it goes upward in life.' 'Certainly--yes, Sir--by all means,' responds the clerk; 'at least, a finer texture. The mourning of poor people is very coarse, very; quite different from that of persons of quality. Canvass to crape, Sir.' The lady next asks if he has a variety of half-mourning; to which he replies: 'O, infinite--the largest stock in town; full, and half, and quarter, and half-quarter mourning, shaded off from a _grief prononce_ to the slightest _nuance_ of regret.' The lady is directed to another counter, and introduced to 'the gent. who superintends the Intermediate Sorrow Department;' who inquires: 'You wish to inspect some half-mourning, Madam? the second stage of distress? As such Ma'am, allow me to recommend this satin--intended for grief when it has subsided; alleviated, you see, Ma'am, from a dead black to a dull lead color. It's a Parisian novelty, Ma'am, called 'Settled Grief,' and is very much worn by ladies of a certain age, who do not intend to embrace Hymen a second time.' ('Old women, mayhap, about seventy,' mutters the Squire.) 'Exactly so, Sir; or thereabout. Not but what some ladies, Ma'am, set in for sorrow much earlier; indeed, in the prime of life; and for such cases it is a very durable wear; but praps it's too _lugubre_: now here's another--not exactly black, but shot with a warmish tint, to suit a woe moderated by time. The French call it a 'Gleam of Comfort.' We've sold several pieces of it; it's very attractive; we consider it the happiest pattern of the season.' 'Yes,' once more interposes the Squire; 'some people are very happy in it no doubt.' 'No doubt, Sir. There's a charm in melancholy, Sir. I'm fond of the pensive myself. Praps, Madam, you would prefer something still more in the transition state, as we call it, from grave to gay. In that case, I would recommend this lavender Ducape, with only just a souvenir of sorrow in it; the slightest tinge of mourning, to distinguish it from the garb of pleasure. But possibly you desire to see an appropriate style of costume for the juvenile branches, when sorrow their young days has shaded? Of course, a milder degree of mourning than for adults. Black would be precocious. This, Ma'am, for instance--a dark pattern on gray; an interesting dress, Ma'am, for a little girl, just initiated in the vale of tears; only eighteen-pence a yard Ma'am, and warranted to wash.' The 'Intermediate Sorrow Department,' however, derives no patronage from the 'hard customer;' and we next find her in the 'Coiffure Department,' looking at caps, and interrogating a show-woman in deep mourning, who is in attendance, and enlarging upon the beauty of her fabrics: 'This is the newest style, Ma'am. Affliction is very much modernized, and admits of more _gout_ than formerly. Some ladies indeed for their morning grief wear rather a plainer cap; but for evening sorrow, this is not at all too _ornee_. French taste has introduced very considerable alleviations.' Failing however, in 'setting her _caps_' for the new customer, the show-woman 'tries the handkerchief' enticement; exhibiting one with a fringe of artificial tears worked on the border--'the '_Larmoyante_,' a sweet-pretty idea.' The Squire intimates that as a handkerchief _to be used_, it would most likely be found 'rather scrubby for the eyes.' But the show-woman removes _this_ objection: 'O dear, no, Sir--if you mean wiping. The wet style of grief is quite gone out--quite! The dry cry is decidedly the genteel thing.' No wonder that the Squire, as he left the establishment with his 'better half,' was fain to exclaim: 'Humph! And so that's a Mason de Dool! Well! if it's all the same to you, Ma'am, I'd rather die in the country, and be universally lamented after the old fashion; for, as to London, what with the new French modes of mourning, and the 'Try Warren' style of blacking the premises, it do seem to me that before long all sorrow will be sham Abram, and the House of Mourning a regular Farce!' . . . A _Canadian Correspondent_, in a few 'free and easy' couplets, advises us how much we have lost by declining a MS. drama of his, which he is hammering out on the anvil of his brain. We subjoin a few lines of 'The Angry Poet:'

'THE _damper_, the _draft_ of my drama you've checked; You've stunted my laurels--my rich cargo wrecked! That cargo! O! never was galleon of Spain Thus freighted, by winds wafted over the Main! There were stuffs, and brocades, and rich laces and blonde; There were Damascene blades, and thy silks Trebisond; There was armor from Milan, both cuirass and helm, Abelards, Eloisas, and Father Anselm: There were jewels, and gold, and the amulet's power, A hero to spout, and to rant by the hour; A lady to love, and be loved, and to faint, As a matter of course, turning pale through her paint! There were clowns who the grave-digger clown could outvie, And princes who on the stage strutted so high That Prince Hamlet they'd _cut_; who could pick up a scull, Vote his morals a bore, and his wit mighty dull! There were spirits that roam in the caves of the deep, Coming back to our earth, as ghosts will do, to peep! A king of the Cannibals--warriors, a host; And a city with domes, mid the dim waters lost: There was some one descended from BRIAN BORU; For Pleasaunce a hunchback, in French 'Un Tortu;' Every scene was an episode--tragic each act; Winding up with swords clashing, or pistols well cracked.'

* * * * *

WE have just received the following from an esteemed correspondent, who transcribes it verbatim from the familiar letter of a friend. If we have a solitary reader who can peruse it without emotion, let him confine his indifference within his own cold bosom:

'I HAVE just returned from the funeral of poor EMMA G----, a little girl to whom I had been for years most tenderly attached. As there was something very touching in the circumstances connected with her death, I will relate them to you. She was the daughter of a widow, a near neighbor of mine. When I first knew her, she was a sprightly child of about four years of age, perfect in form and feature. The bloom of health was on her cheek; her eye was the brightest I ever saw; while in her bosom there glowed a generous affection that seemed to embrace all with whom she came in contact. But when she reached her seventh year, her health began to decline. The rose suddenly paled on her cheek, and her eye had acquired prematurely that sad, thoughtful expression which gives so melancholy a charm to the features of wasting beauty. Her mother looked on with an anxious heart and at an utter loss to account for so sudden a change in her health. But soon a new source of anxiety appeared. While dressing her one day, she observed on EMMA'S back, just between the shoulders, a small swelling, of about the size of a walnut. As she watched this spot, and observed that it grew larger from day to day, the mother began to have sad misgivings. These however she kept to herself for a time. Soon afterward, a slight stoop in her gait became visible. The family physician was now called in, and the worst forebodings of the mother were confirmed. Her idolized child was fast becoming a hump-back!

'I will not attempt to describe the feelings of the mother, who was thus doomed to witness from day to day the slow growth of that which was to make one so dear to her a cripple and a dwarf. Suffice it to say, her love as well as care seemed to be redoubled, and EMMA became more than ever the child of her affections. Nor did her little companions neglect her when she could no longer join in their out-door sports, and her own sprightly step had given place to a slow, stooping-gait, and the sweet ringing voice to a sad or querulous tone, that sometimes made the very heart ache. On the contrary, all vied with each other in administering to her amusements. Among them, none clung to her with more assiduity than her brother WILLIAM, who was the nearest to her own age. He gave up all his own out-door play, in order to be with her, and seemed never so happy as when he could draw a smile, sad though it was, from her thoughtful features. But after a while, EMMA grew wayward under her affliction; and unfortunately, though generally good-natured, WILLIAM had a quick temper, to check which required more self-command than commonly falls to one so young. Sometimes, therefore, when he found plan after plan, which he had projected for her amusement, rejected with peevish contempt, he could hardly conceal from her his own wounded feelings. Yet, though at times apparently ungrateful, EMMA was perhaps not so in fact; and she loved her brother better than any one else, save her mother. It was only in moments when her too sensitive nature had been chafed perhaps by her own reflections--for like the majority of children in her circumstances, she was thoughtful beyond her years--that her conduct seemed unkind. And then, when she marked the clouded expression of her brother's face, she would ask forgiveness in so meek a spirit, and kiss his cheek so affectionately, that he forgave her almost as soon as offended.

'Years thus passed on, when one day, after she had been more than usually perverse and fretful, WILLIAM, who had been reading to her, on receiving some slight rebuff, started suddenly from his seat by her side, called her '_a little hunch-back_,' and left the room. In a moment, however, his passion subsided, and returning, he found his sister in tears. He attempted to put his arm around her neck, but she repulsed him, and slipping away, retired to her own chamber. Her mother soon after learned what had happened, and going to EMMA, found her upon the bed in a paroxysm of grief. She endeavored to soothe her feelings, but in vain; she refused to be comforted. 'I want to _die_, mother,' she replied to all her endearments; 'I have long felt that I was a burden to you all.' She cried herself to sleep that night, and on the morrow was too ill to rise. The doctor was called in, and warned the mother against an approaching fever. For three days she remained in an uncertain state; but on the fourth, the fever came in earnest, and thenceforth she was confined to her pillow.

'In the mean time, the grief of WILLIAM had been more poignant even than that of his sister. Thrice he had been to her bedside to ask her forgiveness, and kiss once more her pallid cheek; but she turned her face resolutely away, and refused to recognize him. After these repulses he would slowly leave the room, and going to his own chamber, sit brooding for hours over the melancholy consequences of his rashness. Owing to the previous enfeebled health of EMMA, the fever made rapid progress, and it soon became apparent that she must die. WILLIAM, in consequence of the violent aversion of his sister, had latterly been denied admittance to the chamber, though he lingered all day about the door, eagerly catching the least word in regard to her state, and apparently unmindful of all other existence.

'One morning there was evidently a crisis approaching; for the mother and attendants, hurrying softly in and out the sufferer's chamber, in quick whispered words gave orders or imparted intelligence to others. WILLIAM saw it all, and with the quick instinct of affection, seemed to know what it foreboded. Taking his little stool, therefore, he sat down beside the chamber-door, and waited in silence. In the mean time, the mother stood over the dying child, watching while a short unquiet slumber held her back for a little while longer. Several times a sweet smile trembled round the sufferer's lips, and her arms moved as if pressing something to her bosom. Then she awoke, and fixing her eyes upon her mother, whispered faintly, 'I thought WILLIAM was here.' A stifled sob was heard at the door, which stood partly open. Mrs. G---- stepped softly out, and leading WILLIAM to the bed-side, pointed to his dying sister. He threw himself upon her bosom, and pressing his lips to her pale cheek, prayed for forgiveness. EMMA did not heed him; but looking again in her mother's face, and pointing upward, said softly: 'I shant be so _there!_--shall I, mother?'

'No, my poor child!' replied the weeping parent; 'I hope not. But don't talk _so_, EMMA. Forgive your poor brother, or you'll break his heart.'

'EMMA tried to gasp something; but whatever it was, whether of love or hate, it never reached a mortal ear. In a few moments she was no more.'

* * * * *

WE take your amiable hint, good 'P.' of S----, and shall venture the forfeit. That our own 'humor is no great shakes,' we very cheerfully admit--so that there is an end to _that_ 'difference of opinion.' 'P.' reminds us of an anecdote which we had not long since from a friend. 'There, take that!' said a would-be facetious doctor to a patient, whom he had been boring almost to extinction with what he fancied to be humor; 'take it; 't will do you good, though it _is_ nauseous.' 'Don't say a word about _that_,' said the patient, swallowing the revolting potion; 'the man who has endured your _wit_, has nothing to fear from your _physic!_' . . . 'C. M. P.'s parody on '_Oh no, I never mention Him_,' is a very indifferent affair, compared with HOOD'S transcript of that well-known song. We remember a stanza or two of it:

'OH, no, I never mentioned it, I never said a word; But lent my friend a five-pound note, Of which I've never heard. He said he merely borrowed it To pay another debt; And since I've never mention'd it, He thinks that I forget!

'Whene'er we ride, I pays the 'pike; I settles every treat; He rides my horse, he drives my cab, But cuts me when we meet. My new umbrell' I lent him too, One night--'t was very wet; Though he forgets it ne'er came back, Ah, me! _I_ don't forget!'

* * * * *

THE kite-season has opened with great activity. Did you ever remark, reader, when Nature begins to waken from her winter-sleep; when the woods 'beyond the swelling floods' of the rivers begin to redden; when the first airs of spring assume their natural blandness; when ladies are out with their 'spring hats' and carmen with their spring-carts; when the snow has left us, and the city-trees are _about_ leave-ing; how innumerous kites begin to thicken in the air? Yonder a big unwieldy fellow rises with calm dignity, trailing his long tail with great propriety behind him; here a little bustling creature ducks and dives, coquetting first on this side, then on that; until finally turning two or three somersets, it almost reaches the earth; but soon rises at a tangent, and sails far up into the bright blue firmament. Look! the air is full of them! It is a charming amusement, this kite-flying of the boys. We greatly affect it, even now, although we are 'out of our 'teens!' There is something ethereal in it; some thing that lifts up the young admiration

'To that blue vault and sapphire wall That overhangs and circles all,'

and the mysterious realm that lies beyond its visible confines. . . . WE select from the '_Random Reminiscences of a Retired Merchant_' a single passage; the entire article being quite too short for any other department of our work: 'There once flourished in one of our commercial cities a little French merchant, who was very well known to every man and boy by the fact of his being always followed by a curly-haired yellow dog with his tail 'cut a little too short by a d----d sight!' During the last war, our little Frenchman was doing a very thriving business in the dry-goods line, and was supposed to be a little sharper at a bargain than any of his fellow-tradesmen. There also flourished at the same time, in the same city, an importing merchant of Yankee origin, who was noted as a long-headed, close-fisted dealer. It is well known that during the war English goods were sold at enormous prices. The Yankee merchant was in that line of trade; and a few days before the arrival in this country of the news of peace, he received private advices from the Continent which led him to anticipate it. As he had a large supply of English goods on hand at the time, the prices of which would of course instantly fall, he set about disposing of them as soon as possible to his less informed and unsuspecting customers. The little Frenchman was one of his victims. After much haggling, and the offer of a long credit, the importer effected a bill of sale of goods to him, to the amount of something like twenty thousand dollars, taking his notes on long time in payment. These he considered perfectly good, of course, as his customer's reputation in the money-market was unsullied. The bargain being consummated, the two friends parted, each in a capital humor with himself; the Yankee to deposit the notes in his strong box, and the Frenchman to his store, where, receiving his newly-purchased goods, he immediately commenced marking them one hundred per cent. above cost, thus making before midnight, to use his own boast, a _profit_ of twenty thousand dollars on his purchase! Three days afterward the official news of peace came; English goods instantly fell one half, and our little Frenchman awoke in horror from his dream of cent. per cent. Nine persons out of every ten under such circumstances would have failed at once. But _nil desperandum_ was the motto of our Frenchman. He saw that he had been '_bit_' by his commercial friend, and he immediately set his wits at work to turn the tables upon him. So, late in the evening of the next day he repaired to the dwelling of the importer, and told a long and pitiful story of his embarrassments. He said his conscience already smote him for making so heavy a purchase while in failing circumstances, and that he had come to make the only reparation in his power; namely, to yield up the goods obtained of the importer, on the latter's cancelling the notes given therefor. The Yankee at first demurred; but on the Frenchman insisting that he was a bankrupt, and that he feared the moment he opened in the morning the sheriff would pounce upon him with a writ that would swallow up every thing, he finally agreed to the proposition. 'Half a loaf was better than no bread,' he thought; and so the notes and the bill of sale were accordingly cancelled. By daylight in the morning the Yankee was at the Frenchman's store, with his teams, as had been agreed upon the night before, and every package of his goods was soon removed. The two merchants again parted, the Frenchman with a mind relieved of a heavy load, and the Yankee rather down in the mouth at the result of his trade. Two or three days afterward, as the importer was passing the Frenchman's store, he observed his sign still up, and every thing apparently as flourishing as ever. He stepped in to see what it all meant. 'Hallo! Mr. S----,' said he, 'I thought you had failed!' '_Failed!_' repeated the Frenchman, thrusting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and sliding his legs apart from counter to counter, till he resembled a small Colossus of Rhodes: '_Failed?_ No, be gar! Firmer than ever, Mr. H----, but I _should_ have failed, _almosht_, if I hadn't got rid of dem tamn'd English goods at cost!' Straitway the out-witted Yankee 'departed the presence!'' . . . IT has been generally supposed that the oratorical efforts of 'Major POGRAM,' as described by Mr. DICKENS in a late number of his 'Chuzzlewit,' rather carricatured even the worst specimens of western eloquence; but the subjoined passage from the speech of a Mr. MAUPIN in the Indiana legislature, upon the subject of establishing a tobacco warehouse and inspection at Paducah, seems to militate against the validity of this 'flattering function:'

'MR. SPEAKER: I feel incompetent to measure this comprehensive subject. Were my thoughts as deep as the Mississippi, and as clear as the Ohio, I could not grasp its whole magnitude. It requires a mighty mind; one that can look beyond the landscape; he must be able to look even beyond the ocean; to grapple with all the intricacies and winding convolutions of the subject, and to map in his mind the whole length and breadth of its territories. Here, Sir, is a river, whose broad and deep stream meanders from Paducah through one of the most fertile tobacco countries in the world, to Ross's landing, and at the terminus of the great Charleston railroad, and possessing a steam navigation of eight hundred miles, and giving commercial facilities to the briny ocean. Behold this vast channel of commerce; this magnificent thoroughfare of trade; one grand, unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will continue to roll on, and on, gathering strength and bulk in its onward progress, until it sweeps its ponderous power to the town of Paducah, and there stand a towering monument of patriotic glory and sublime grandeur, with the noble American eagle proudly perched upon its cloud-capped summit, and gazing with swelling pride and admiration down upon the magnificent spectacle of the greatness of human wisdom and power!'

* * * * *

EVERY-BODY has heard of the good old lady who purchased a family Bible at a bookstore, and soon after returned it, being desirous to exchange it for one of larger print. 'We have at present no Bible,' said the clerk, 'of a larger-sized type than the one you have.' 'Well,' replied the lady, 'I wish you would _print me one_, and I'll call in a day or two and get it!' She thought a request so reasonable could readily be complied with. One of our most prominent publishers mentions a clever anecdote of a poetess, who in reading the proofs of her forthcoming volume, found passages of a page or more in length enclosed in parenthetical pen-marks in the margin, with 'THOMSON,' 'GRAY,' 'MOORE,' 'BURNS,' 'WILSON,' etc., inscribed at the end. One day a letter accompanied the return-proofs, in which the lady remarked, that 'she had endured the repeated insinuations of the publisher long enough; she was no _plagiarist_, whatever her other literary faults might be; she had on each occasion looked over the works of MOORE, THOMSON, BURNS, GRAY, etc., but with the exception perhaps of a passage in WILSON'S 'Isle of Palms,' there was not even the slightest _pretext_ for a charge of plagiarism. She would thank the publisher, therefore, to discontinue in future his groundless hints upon the margins of the proof-sheets.' The initiated will understand that the 'insinuations' of which the poetess complained, were simply the names of the different compositors, indicating the lines at which they severally began to place her effusions in type! . . . MANY a reader will recall, as he peruses the subjoined unpretending sketch, a kindred scene in his own experience, 'when life and hope were new:'

OUR OLD MEETING-HOUSE.

LORD, 'tis not ours to make the sea And earth and sky a home for Thee; But in Thy sight our off'ring stands, A humble temple, 'made with hands.'

'MANY years ago, when 'the dew of the morning was fresh upon me,' there stood, just in the edge of the village where I was born, an old church edifice. The graves of many an early settler were round about it; and often as the shadows of evening were settling upon the valley, with half-averted face and hurried steps have I stole noiselessly by to our rural home. O, how many associations crowd upon the memory, in connection with that rude old meeting-house! It was an old-fashioned, square building, without portico, or steeple, or belfry. The winter's hail and summer's rain had beaten against it for half a century. Its numerous small windows, without curtain or blind, let in floods of light. Its small pulpit, perched high upon one side, and close to the wall, concealed the preacher's body, while the heads of the congregation were just seen rising above the square high-backed pews. Hardly a cushion was to be seen; and the interior furnishing was of the simplest and plainest character. I have said that it had associations of great interest. It is now more than an hundred years since a small band of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians settled in that valley. Though but few in number, and braving the elements and the savages, they determined to carry with them into the wilderness not only the Christian's hope, but the Christian's ordinances. A small building of logs arose soon after the settlement, in which for many years an educated and regularly-ordained minister preached the gospel to a little flock. The inquiry had already commenced; 'The prophets, where are they?' The larger part of the pioneers had sunk into peaceful graves, when the war of the revolution commenced. It was still a frontier hamlet, and was soon swallowed up and lost in that terrible whirlwind of death which year after year swept over the settlements of Central New-York. When peace was restored, the remnant of the inhabitants whom war and disease had spared, returned to their former homes. But though war and disease had impoverished them, they had not forgotten the GOD of their fathers. Having no house for assembling together, the inhabitants met in what they termed 'the meeting-house yard;' and there organized anew that church which has continued thence to this day, and determined upon the erection of the old meeting-house of which I have spoken. Under the open heavens, with their feet upon their fathers' graves, they dedicated themselves anew to the service of HIM who was LORD overall, and whom they acknowledged as their only Sovereign. I have looked over the records of that meeting with emotions never to be forgotten. The gray-haired patriarch, loaning on his staff with one hand, and with the other guiding our youthful footsteps to the house of prayer on every Sabbath morning, was one of that small number, and took an active part in that solemn ceremony. The stillness of a Sabbath morning in the country has often been remarked. How often, amid the din and bustle of the great city, does the heart of him who has been accustomed to the holy quietness of the day of rest in some secluded valley, pant for a return to the home of his youth! Such has been my own experience; in the far-off past I see again the gathering of the quiet, orderly congregation; I hear the voice of the good old father who ministered in holy things; I sit by the open window and look out upon the green graves thick strown round the old meeting-house; the warbling of the feathered songsters in the grove near by falls softly upon the ear. The voice of prayer is hushed, and the voice of praise ascends. Alas! the voices of most of those which were then attuned on earth, are now attuned to more celestial music in another world!

'But our old meeting-house, where is it? It has gone with those who, in the midst of trials, and in the plenitude of their poverty, with their own hands hewed out its massive timbers; and the place that knew it knows it no more! It was in the fall of the year that a traveller on horseback rode up to the principal hotel, and as he dismounted and handed the reins to his host, he inquired what building that was in the southern part of the village? On being informed that it was the meeting-house, he remarked, with a dogged air, that 'he had often seen the LORD'S house, but had never seen the LORD'S _barn_ before!' The comical remark of the traveller produced an immediate action. The good old house soon disappeared. A more ambitious edifice was built in another part of the village. The land-marks are now entirely effaced, and the spot where it stood has been added to the 'meeting-house yard.' The monuments of the young and the aged who sleep there dot over the place where the first Presbyterian congregation, ay, the first congregation of Evangelical Christians of any denomination, in Central New-York, assembled to worship the living GOD.'

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WE are promised by an esteemed friend some interesting extracts from the original American correspondence of Mrs. GRANT of Laggan, whose 'Memoir and Correspondence,' edited by her son, has recently attracted so much attention and remark in Great-Britain. Mrs. GRANT appears to have been a woman of very remarkable powers, and of the most admirable _common sense_. Her observations upon the 'amusive talents' of THEODORE HOOK, and his entire devotion to their cultivation, are replete with the soundest wisdom. The distinction between living to amuse the public merely, and the exertion of one's intellectual powers for one's own benefit, and with an eye to the claims of riper years, is admirably discriminated and set forth. There is not perhaps a more instructive lesson than that conveyed by _professional_ wits, who are 'first applauded and then _endured_, when people see that it is all they have.' As auxiliaries, as contrasts, with reflection and thoughtful exercitations of the mind, wit and humor are felicitous matters; as an intellectual _main-stay,_ however, they have been weighed in the balance by a hundred brilliant examples, and have always been 'found wanting.' . . . PUNCH, at this present writing, save three or four numbers, in February, is among the missing. Late issues however, furnish some valuable contributions to academical statistics; as for example, Mr. BOYS, who in his report upon the metropolitan school-visitation, writes as follows:

'THE use of sponge for cleaning slates he found confined to 17-1/4 per cent.; of whom 5-1/2 used the sponge wet with water, and 11-3/4 with saliva; the remaining 82-3/4 made use of the latter liquid and the cuffs of their jackets instead of sponges, with an occasional recourse to the pocket-handkerchief. The author found, in schools in which the Latin language was not taught, a lamentable deficiency in the knowledge of the meaning of 'meum' and 'tuum;' he pointed out how the great extent of juvenile crime might thus be accounted for, as being caused by the absence of all instruction in the Latin language, and hoped that teaching it would soon be made obligatory upon all school-masters.'

There is a humorous sketch of an examination of law-students, from which we select an 'exercise' or two:

'QUES: Have you attended any and what law lectures? ANS: I have attended to many legal lectures, when I have been admonished by police magistrates for kicking up rows in the streets, pulling off knockers, etc.

QUES: What is a real action? ANS: An action brought in earnest, and not by way of a joke.

QUES: What are a bill and answer? ANS: Ask my tailor.

QUES: How would you file a bill? ANS: I don't know, but would lay the case before a blacksmith.

QUES: What steps would you take to dissolve an injunction? ANS: I should put it into some very hot water, and let it remain there until it was melted.

QUES: What are post-nuptial articles? ANS: Children.

QUES: What is simple larceny? ANS: Picking a pocket of a handkerchief, and leaving a purse of money behind.'

We have had books on etiquette, of various kinds, lately, but a work of this sort for prisons will be found, one would think, to supply an important desideratum. GEORGE SELWYN, when a servant was sent to Newgate, for stealing articles from the club-house of which SELWYN was a member, was very much shocked: 'What a horrid report,' said he, 'the fellow will give of us to the gentlemen in Newgate!' This feeling will doubtless be more general by and by:

'IN consequence of complaints that have been made by persons committed to prison before trial, who object to their not being allowed to mix with other prisoners, it has been thought necessary to frame a Book of Etiquette for prison purposes. Of course a superior delinquent, like a forger, could not be on visiting terms with a mere pick-pocket, nor could a man charged with stealing a hundred pounds, feel at his ease in the society of one whose alleged theft might be mean and insignificant. It is, we believe, intended to introduce the prisoners to each other formally, not by name, but by the offence with which they are charged. Thus, the Governor of Newgate would say to Felony: 'Allow me to introduce you to AGGRAVATED LARCENY. You ought to know each other--indeed you ought. AGGRAVATED LARCENY, FELONY; FELONY, AGGRAVATED LARCENY.' By a nice adjustment and proper application of the rules of etiquette, a very admirable system of social intercourse might be established in all our prisons, and the present complaint of a want of 'good society,' which falls so severely on superior scoundrels, would at once be got rid of.'

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DEAFNESS, although sometimes rather annoying--as for example in the case mentioned in preceding pages by JOHN WATERS--is yet not without its advantages. Your conversational ''Deaf BURKE,' who can endure any amount of 'punishment' without being the worse for it,' enjoys not unfrequently a great deal of negative felicity. We envied the condition of such an one the other day, while sitting with a friend at the 'Globe,' over such potables and edibles as that matchless establishment can alone set before its guests. At a table in near proximity, sat two Englishmen, whose comments upon 'matters and things' in America were embodied in such 'voluble speech' that we could scarcely hear ourselves speak. 'They may _talk_ about their hinstitutions as much as they please,' said one of the speakers, 'but honly _look_ at 'em--see their heffect, from the 'ead of the government, down. Yesterday I perused in the 'Courier' newspaper an account of a negro's skin, hentire, that was found with the 'ead attached, in the Mississippi river!' ''Orid, isn't it! Think o' such a thing as that picked up in the Tems! And last week. I read in the 'Erald of a man near the Canada lines, who was found dead by the side of a fallen tree, half eaten up by wild hogs or panthers. He 'ad a flask of whiskey by his side, which he had taken 'neat,' till it had killed him; and in his pocket was a dirty pack o' cards, wrapped up in a copy of the Declaration of Hindependence! That's your _liberty_ for ye!' [Symbol: Hand pointing right] See if these very absurdities be not found embodied within a twelve-month in some new work by a travelling Englishman, upon that 'miserable experiment at self-government, the United States of America!' . . . HERE are some scraps of '_Parisian Gossip_' which will not be altogether uninteresting to American readers. One of our Paris letters states that at a splendid party given by Lady COWLEY, there occurred a rather curious incident. 'Among the guests was a Mr. L----, (one of the _snobiculi_, most likely,) who, believing that none but a friend whom he addressed was within hearing, said, 'And they call this a party? Why, I never saw any thing so dull in all my life. It is not worth the trouble of dressing for such an affair; and then the rooms are so intolerably hot.' Unfortunately, the noble hostess was standing near, and overheard him, and immediately said: 'Mr. L----, there (pointing to the ante-room,) is a cooler room, and beyond it is the hall, still cooler.' This prompt and significant hint was felt, understood, and taken.' 'Every body in Paris knows or has heard of HALEVY the composer, and his brother, the author. A _bon mot_ of a pretty and sarcastic lady, at the expense of both of them, is now going the round of the gossipping circles. 'Do you like HALEVY, the author?' inquired a friend. '_Pas du tout, pas du tout!_' answered the lady; 'He is as dull as if his brother had composed him!' EUGENE SUE has hatched a large brood of 'Mysteries.' The _Journal des Debats_ having published 'Mysteries of Paris,' the _Courier Francais_ is now publishing the 'Mysteries of London.' At Berlin no less than four different authors have published its 'Mysteries.' The 'Mysteries of Brussels' are being detailed in one of its journals. The 'Mysteries of Hamburg' have been exposed in print. At Vienna they are giving the 'Mysteries of Constantinople;' and a Paris newspaper promises in a short time the 'Mysteries of St. Petersburg.' Going on at this rate, there will soon be no 'Mysteries' in the world, and even the very word will become obsolete.' . . . '_The God of our Idolatry_' contains some home-thrusts at the national love of money, and not a few just animadversions upon the standard of respectability which obtains, in certain quarters, among us. HAMILTON and BASIL HALL'S experience in this regard seems also to have been that of our correspondent. The tendency of this standard, in a social and intellectual point of view, is very far from elevating. 'You are going to the dinner at ----'s to-day, of course,' said a lady with 'an eye to the main chance' to a friend of ours, the other day; 'the company will be composed of some of our most 'fore-handed citizens--all _heavy men_,' Our friend _did_ go to the dinner; and he found the guests as 'heavy' as their best friends could have wished them to be. . . . READING, in presence of a travelled friend, the proof of the admirable paper which opens the present number, we came to the passage which records the opinion of KEPLER, that 'the world is a vast animal, that breathes and reasons;' whereupon our listener remarked: 'No doubt of it; it _is_ an animal; I've seen its four-quarters myself!' It was a pun worthy of a butcher. . . . WE are not so _certain_ that the moral of '_The Independent Man_' is 'an unexceptionable one.' The 'Charcoal-sketcher' expresses the general opinion, we fear, in this regard: 'There's a double set of principles in this world, one of which is to talk about and the other to act upon; one is preached and the other is practised. You've got hold, somehow, of the wrong set; the set invented by the knowing ones to check competition and to secure all the good things for themselves. That's the reason people are always praising modest merit, while they are pushing along without either the one or the other. You always let go when any body's going to take your place at table; you always hold back when another person's wanting the last of the nice things on the dish. That's not the way; bow and nod, and show your teeth with a fascination, but take what you want for all that. This is manners--knowing the world. To be polite is to have your own way gracefully; other people are delighted at your style--you have the profit.' . . . THE reader will not overlook the '_Alligatorical Sketch_' in preceding pages. We begin to perceive how much the alligator has been slandered. It _yawns_ merely, it would seem; and the only care requisite is, to be absent when its jaws close! 'The 'gator isn't what you may call a _han'some_ critter, but there's a great deal of _openness_ when he smiles!' The _smile_ of an alligator!! . . . 'Cleanliness,' says FULLER, 'is godliness;' and he is not far out of the way; for no man, we think, can be a dirty Christian. In a moral and religious point of view, then, we are doing good service in calling public attention to the spacious baths of Mr. CHARLES RABINEAU, at the Astor-House, and at his new establishment at Number 123 Broadway, Albany. Go wash in them and be clean, reader, and thank us for the joy which you will experience, when you shall have come out of the water and gone your ways. . . . ONE of the late London pictorial publications contains a portrait of Sir HUDSON LOWE, the notorious keeper of NAPOLEON, the Emperor of the French, at St. Helena. It is in perfect keeping with the generally received estimate of the character of that functionary. The wretched thatch that disfigures without concealing the intellectual poverty of his narrow skull; the scowling features; the ragged penthouse brows; are 'close denotements' of the truth of 'Common Report.' In short, judging from the much-bepraised 'likeness' to which we allude, if Sir HUDSON LOWE was not a tyrant, and a small-minded one withal, GOD doesn't write a legible hand. . . . SOME clever wag in the last BLACKWOOD has an article, written in a hurry, upon the _hurriedness_ of literary matters in these our 'go-ahead' days. 'People,' he says, 'have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned things called books, but even to read them. Instead of cutting new works page by page, they cut them altogether:

'WHEN England luxuriated in the novels of RICHARDSON, in eight volumes, it drove in coaches and four, at the rate of five miles an hour. A journey was then esteemed a family calamity; and people abided all the year round in their cedar parlors, thankful to be diverted by the arrival of the _Spectator_, or a few pages of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, or a new sermon. To their incidental lives, a book was an event. Those were the days worth writing for! The fate of RICHARDSON'S heroines was made a national affair; and people interceded with him by letter to 'spare Clarissa,' as they would not now intercede with her Majesty to spare a new EFFIE DEANS. The successive volumes of _Pope's Iliad_ were looked for with what is called 'breathless' interest, while such political sheets as the _Drapier's Letters_, or _Junius_, set the whole kingdom in an uproar. And now, if POPE, or SWIFT, or FIELDING, or JOHNSON, or STERNE, were to rise from the grave, MS. in hand, the most adventurous publisher would pass a sleepless night before he undertook the risk of paper and print; would advise a small edition, and exact a sum down in ready money, to be laid out in puffs and advertisements! 'Even then, though we may get rid of a few copies to the circulating libraries,' he would observe, 'do not expect, Sir, to obtain readers. A few old maids in the county towns, and a few gouty old gentlemen at the clubs, are the only persons of the present day who ever open a book!' And who can wonder? _Who_ has leisure to read? _Who_ cares to sit down and spell out accounts of travels which he can make at less cost than the cost of the narrative? _Who_ wants to peruse fictitious adventures, when rail-roads and steam-boats woo him to adventures of his own? People are busy ballooning or driving; shooting like stars along rail-roads, or migrating like swallows or wild-geese.'

In allusion to the illustrated newspapers, now vieing with each other in enterprise and expense, in the British metropolis, the writer says: 'The pictorial printing press is now your only wear! Every thing is communicated by delineation. We are not _told_ but _shown_ how the world is wagging. Views of the Holy Land are superseding even the Holy Scriptures, and a pictorial BLACKSTONE is teaching the ideas of sucking lawyers how to shoot. Libels are veiled in carricature. Instead of _writing_ slander and flat blasphemy, the modern method is to _draw_ it, and not to 'draw it mild' either. The columns of certain papers bear a striking likeness to a child's alphabet, such as 'A was an Archer, and shot at a frog.' All the world is now instructed by symbols, as formerly the deaf and dumb. We have little doubt of shortly seeing announcements, standing like tomb-stones in those literary cemeteries, the Saturday papers, of 'A new work upon America, from the graver of GEORGE CRUIKSHANK;' or 'A new fashionable novel, (diamond edition,) from the accomplished pencil of 'H. B.'' . . . WE have a '_Query_' from a Philadelphia correspondent, as to whether Mr. and Mrs. WOOD would not be likely to come over here, if invited, and in company with BROUGH, and other artists, establish English opera among us. Touching the disposition of the WOODS in this matter, we know nothing; but BROUGH is too busily employed to admit of such a consummation. What with his agency for the new sporting gun-powder, (which DANIEL WEBSTER declares to be superior in strength and cleanliness to any other thing of the kind in the world,) and for the 'Illustrated London News,' 'Old PARR'S Life-pills' etc., he has scarcely leisure to achieve his private calls, and execute occasionally, for the gratification of his friends, those charming airs which are indissolubly associated with his name. . . . Messrs. SNELLING AND TISDALE'S '_Metropolitan Library and Reading-Room_,' at 599 Broadway, near Houston-street, supplies an important desideratum in that quarter of the metropolis. In addition to a well-stocked library and reading-room, there are coffee, conversation, chess, and cigar-apartments, and all the belongings of a first establishment after its kind. . . . WE had clipped for insertion, from a Baltimore journal, a poem in honor of OLE BULL, entitled '_The Bewitched Fiddle_,' which we have unluckily mislaid or lost. It was by Mr. HEWITT, a popular song-writer and musical composer, and was one of the most fanciful and felicitous things we have seen in a month of Sundays. As it is at this moment out of our power to print it, we can only counsel our readers, if they encounter it any where, not to fail of its perusal. . . . WE have a pleasant metropolitan story to tell one of these days, (at least we think so,) of which we have been reminded by the following from a late English magazine:

'THE vulgar genteel are nervously cautious concerning every thing they say or do; they are ever alive to the dread of compromising their 'gentility.' At a ball--it was a _charity_-ball!--given at a fashionable watering-place, a pretty young woman, who was sitting by her mother, was invited by a gentleman to dance. He led her to a set; when, instantly, two 'young ladies' who were of it, haughtily, withdrew to their seats. 'They had no notion of dancing in _such_ company'--and with good reason. The young person was nothing more than the daughter of a wealthy and respectable tradesman of the place; while they--the two Misses KNIBBS--were members of its resident _small_ 'aristocracy.' The places they had vacated were good-naturedly filled by two ladies who had witnessed the proceeding, one of whom was the daughter, the other, the niece, of a nobleman. _Their_ position was too well established to be compromised by dancing for a quarter of an hour in the same set with a respectable tradesman's daughter; but the two Misses KNIBBS were the daughters of a retired soap-boiler.'

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.*. WE have numerous communications in prose and verse, several of them from favorite contributors, of which we shall make more particular mention in our next. Three pages of '_Literary Record_,' although in type, are unavoidably omitted.