EDITOR'S TABLE. 'Down the River, March, 1854. 'MARCH!-The 'moneth' of March in this climate is most trying to the tempers and constitutions of men. I think that it is, without exception, the most dreary season of the whole year. Every artificial appliance which people who are 'well-to-do' in the world can command, is necessary in order to modify its disagreeable character, and make it pass away with any degree of comfort. Tight houses, double windows, Liverpool and Anthracite furnaces, steam-pipes, flannels, cloaks, over-coats, shawls, gloves, mittens, clogs, etc., are most needed at the very time when you have been tempted to dispense with their use. It wants the sharp and stinging atmosphere of winter which makes the spirits brisk, and arouses all the physical energies to meet it. It has its snow-flakes, but they are soft and melting, not dry, and crystalline, and creaking. The merry sleigh-bells are no more hung about the necks of horses, nor do the latter neigh and squeal like blooded colts, as in the exhilarating air of Januarius. In the country, all the gutters run, the slush penetrates the pores of the finest leather, and rises above the uncomfortable gum-shoes which cling to the feet. The mud is ankle-deep. Woe be to him whose daily walk is over the red clay of the 'Jarsies,' which sucks off the shoes of horses, however well the blacksmith has nailed them down! Woe be to him whose habitation is on a romantic hill-top in one of the rivertowns! I paid a visit, on invitation, to my friend C —, who lives in an elevated position, selected with a choice taste, for its commanding view of the Hudson, and the opposite Palisadoes. 'It was toward evening, when, in company of a timid woman, we entered a vehicle which had seen hard usage, and commenced an ascent which, for half a mile, brought back a forcible remembrance of the terrors of Mount Blanc, or, to say the least, of the dreadful post-roads over the Alleghany mountains. It required an artistic dodging to keep the carriage in balance. It groaned painfully, the driver rolled upon his seat, the horses strained their muscles to the utmost, and more than once, as the wheels sank deeply in some hidden gulley, we were fain to clench our fists spasmodically at the speedy prospect of being sepulchred in mud. Arrived at the top of the hill in safety, we alight, while JEHU, whose abilities had been taxed to the very utmost, remarked that the man who would build a house in such a place, was worthy of a residence in Sing-Sing prison: "AH! few can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar.' It was as a preliminary exercise and training of the limbs, no doubt, in the noble race of ambition, that my friend has fixed his temporary abode as high as Crow's nest. After we had got up, and got in, and became refreshed, and warmed, and hung up our votive chaplets, what was my surprise to hear him propose that we should presently descend again into the valley to attend a lecture at a country lyceum! Moreover, a thick fog began to distil in copious rain. The feat was resolved upon, but it looked like one of unparalleled rashness; and what motive could there be to make so tremendous an effort? Were not lectures a drug in the market? Was there any prospect of being treated to a single novel or original idea? None, whatever. Still it is necessary to stand by and encourage associations of the kind. We moved onward in single file, four in number. C―― held the lantern, and swayed it around, so as to illuminate a tolerable circumference, leaping from tuft to tuft, from log to log, and from rock to rock, and from ditch to ditch. We followed suit. At last we reach the low-lands, where muck and mud still abound. 'But after all, the city, with its paved streets and municipal regulations, is not a whit better off in this respect. The little sweepers who, with bare legs, ply their brooms at the crossings, and stretch their supplicating palms for pennies, alone mimic the laborious HERCULES, who could perform the job of cleansing such an Augean stable. The metropolitan mud is, moreover, a most filthy compound, which no chemist could analyze, except into its constituent parts of decayed potatoes and vegetable things. The multitude of smells which lurk therein or hover around the sepulchral heaps raised up jocosely to the memory of some luckless functionary, are destitute of names or parentage. No one can find out what begat them, or whence they came, except that they are denizens of the city. 'Hope is soon dashed by despair in this treacherous month. Warm and genially the sun shines for a few days, the skies are blue, and the streets are thronged by gay pedestrians, and in the exhilaration of the feelings produced by such a change, we begin to say, 'The winter is past, the rain is over and gone.' Presently, from snow-mountains comes on a violent and most exasperating easterly wind, cutting you to the bone with a far sharper severity than the still, zeronian cold which we might think intolerable, and howling over the earth for a week incessantly, carrying with it, through the streets and thoroughfares, clouds of dust which destroy the clothes, fill the eyes, nose, and mouth with grit, and penetrate the pores like the fine particles swept along by the simoon or the sirocco. You put your head down like a camel in the desert, and in the corner of a street you stand to strengthen your position, as a ship casts anchor in a gale. In the broad avenues you see the yellow, murky cloud advancing, and turning your back as an obstacle, it wheels around you, and, separated into columns, rolls on till it shall meet some other barrier. Arrived at home, you must change every particle of dress upon you. Your linen is unfit to be seen; your cloth must be thrashed and beaten; and to get your face and hands clean, and make your finger-nails irreproachable, and your locks free from powder, is the work of one good hour. That being done, your temper, which has become peevish and irritable, is perhaps soothed down by the very nature of cleanliness, to a more amicable and Christian condition. 'Small elements these, however, in the character of our martial friend. On his furious wings he carries the sleet and peppering hail; and if he does not whiten the earth again with immaculate snows, he gives you 'slush' in abundance, (slush, which the very name expresses,) a little softer than mud, and a little thicker than molasses, but at the same time, as it is mostly made in winter, somewhat colder than either. This slush does not bring into play that judgment and careful foresight required in the process which we call 'picking one's steps.' In a muddy region, by pausing a moment and looking before, you find a chip, a stone, an elevated ridge, a dry spot whereon you may leap, and so get over a nasty spot to the opposite brink without having your boots soiled. But the surface of slush is a dead level, almost as much so as that of water. There is no choice to be exercised in crossing, but all you have to do is to pull up your pantaloons, if you are a man, or your skirts, if you are a woman, fix your eyes on the distant shores, and cross the ford in the quickest time possible. Take your course in a direct line. Whether you go ankle-deep, or knee-deep, is immaterial, or at least doubtful. Your business is to get over. 'When sleet has been dashing against your windows all night, you fancy that the wind will veer about, and that the next morning will bring a change of weather. You are not wrong in that supposition, although you may be disappointed in a hopeful augury. When the day dawns, it will not be known to you, unless you creep out of your bed at mid-night, ascend the house-top, and carefully wait for its first beams, like a watchman from his tower. If you remain snoozing, you may not be aroused except by the tintinnabulations of the most clamorous breakfast-bell. As to a change of wind, there is none, except that apparently there is no wind. In whatever direction its impalpable current may sweep would not be indicated by the most downy feather. A dense fog, such as might come from a smouldering forest, rests upon land and sea. You can almost smell the smoke, and could not see the face of your best friend so far as you could pitch a barley-corn from your thumb-nail: < FAR as a little candle casts its rays, Thus speaks the great bard, but an heroic action would stand little chance of admiration if it shone before men through such a medium, which is impenetrable by the most vivid light. Gases are surrounded by short-going rays, extending no farther than the spokes of a wheel. Boats and barges move about stealthily in the river, jostle one another, or, in spite of the scrutiny of pilots, ran butt against the wharves. The most accomplished PALINURUS is as good as stone-blind. The overhanging vapor remains all day, and the perpetual sound of dripping is heard from the eaves; but at mid-night, if awake, perhaps you will once more hear the easterly winds howling with such ferocity as to tear the slate or shingles from the roof, and presently comes solemnly booming on the ear the sounds of the great bells in the iron towers: ONE-TWO-THREE FOUR FIVE. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! 'No articulate voice is more intelligible, or more quickly caught by the sharp ear. In short, all the elements practice their greatest mischief, singly and combined. The little sparks which lie among the ashes, pretending dead, rise up with dazzling wings, and with the swiftness of electric fire, flit off to some ambitious roof. They wake when all the city is asleep, and court the wafting winds, rebound against the asbestus spots, and couch themselves in nests of shavings, or dodge among the sticks of pitchy pine. Their treatment is like that which men receive respected not for their essential principle; treated, it may be, with profound contempt as merely sparks; but looked upon as powerful despots, when they have reached the magnitude of flames. 'Toward the end of the month, after a long interregnum, when the winds have cracked their cheeks,' come two or three genial days again, and the peach-buds grow plump, and the pink-blossoms begin to show themselves. Better for those who love the pulp of fruits and luscious juices, if they would stay behind, else they will turn black, and fall to the ground, when the ponds are glazed with thin ice in the nones of April, and the markets will be impoverished, and the tables will want the ruddy cheek of Peach to blend with golden pears and purple grapes in autumn. But if all this is in a complaining mood, what puts a man in a more unenviable humor than in an exacerbating, easterly wind, to have his hat rudely knocked from off his brows and rolled away, defying all his speed to overtake it, until it lodges in a filthy gutter, or is crushed beneath a cumbrous wheel, and all the while spectators watch the race with outright laughter, or with smiles unmannerly? 'All sorts of diseases now abound. The spotted and speckled form of incipient small-pox walks abroad unconsciously in the streets, exhaling its contaminating breath, and darting its poison into the lungs of the jovial pedestrian, who knows not that he entertains the seeds of the plague, and that the portals of the hospital, which perhaps he has just passed, must soon open to receive him in his loathsome estate. Scarlet-fever, that dread enemy, comes with all its complicated phases, to take away the darling child. The milder measles asserts its reign. An incomprehensible mumps, for which there is nothing to be done, causes the glands to swell. Reiterated and hacking coughs annoy the speakers in public assemblies. Lungs are inflamed, throats sore, noses run, the eyes weep rivers of tears. Many complain wofully at night that they have a 'bad code id der head;' they take a dose of molasses and vinegar, commonly called 'stewed Quaker,' and retire disconsolately for the night. 'The subjects of a hectic fever look forward to this period with prophetic dread. Now the pale cheeks become more wan, and the limbs feebler, and the eyes shine with a more glassy brilliance, and they no longer reply each day in hopeful accents, 'better, better.' They betake themselves to their beds, never to leave them again until the feet of those are without who are to carry them away. But if perchance they survive the cutting blasts and cold tempestuous weather of the season, then they suppose, alas! perhaps with too much confidence, that pale DEATH has given them a respite until succeeding March. Cheerily and chirpingly they go forth into the sun-shine, and feel on an equality with other men. 'O thou cold, cheerless, heartless, and inhospitable month, situate midway betwixt an Arctic winter and the blooming spring, when wilt thou pass by, and cease to disappoint our kindlier hopes? As those who through a lengthened night sigh for the first streaks of the coming dawn, we wait for sobbing April, and the advances of the lovelier May. Welcome, ye violets, faintly breathing! O for the days when roses bloom again with wildest luxury, and honey-bees begin to browse through fields of clover, and bobolinks shall carol on the wing, and when the heart takes up the exulting song, 'The time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land!'' F. W. S. Our entertaining ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF UNCLE REUBEN.' 6 biographer has furnished us with another instalment of the history of that good-hearted man, but inveterate old joker, 'Uncle REUBEN.' He must have been a rare wag. It is quite easy to see that he is a real personage; and doubtless his counterpart will be recalled by many a reader : UNCLE REUBEN' was not much of a politician, although he generally voted with the Federalists; but he would often 'bolt,' and carry the town with him. 'A county senator was to be nominated. Mr. DRAKE, a rich and unscrupulous man, was the candidate of thirteen of the twenty-five towns. 'Uncle REUBEN' had personal knowledge of his dishonesty, and was indignant at such a nomination, solely because he employed more men, held more mortgages, and could carry more voters to the polls than any man in his town. Mr. PEARSON was his rival; a public-spirited, high-minded man, and eminently qualified for the office. But PEARSON wanted one more vote in convention to secure his nomination. But could it be procured in such high party times? It was barely possible. When 'Uncle REUBEN' declared, with more warmth than usual, 'He shall have it!' his friends considered it settled. They believed it would be done, for 'Uncle REUBEN' never missed the mark. But the canvasser reported again and again, 'Thirteen DRAKE men to twelve PEARSON men.' "Uncle REUBEN' stood looking out of the shoe-shop window, when a DRAKE delegate came in sight, driving his loaded team toward the shire-town where DRAKE resided. There is my man!' said 'Uncle REUBEN.' 'He loves a dollar better than his child.' 'Forth went 'Uncle REUBEN,' and accosted Mr. SNow. To the shire-town, Sir?' "'Yes, Sir.' "Well, then, could I get you to do a little errand for me?' "Certainly, Sir.' - "It is a small matter, but what is right is right. I wish you would call at Mr. DRAKE'S counting-room, and get a small balance of account due me - only nine-and-sixpence. It is hardly worth going for, and my neighbors have never got it for me. As soon as I saw you, I thought you was just the man, for you always do what you undertake. Mr. SNow, a man of energy, promptness, and perseverance, is my delight. I love to shake hands with such a man, and I am sure you can get the nine-and-sixpence if any body can. Mr. DRAKE well knows I have no book-account to which I can swear in court; but tell him I can't think him so a bad man as to take advantage of that. He will swell up, and play bluff, Mr. Snow, but you stick to him; and here is a half dollar if you will faithfully attend to the matter.' |