every trip to the Hudson River and back from Lake Erie. Now the same number of mules will do the same amount of work, at least as well as the horses. They will do it at one-half the cost of subsistence; and they will do it fifteen years longer than the horses. In other words, one team of mules will do the work for the same length of time that three teams of horses will do it; for a team of horses cannot be counted on for such work for above seven years at the utmost. Thus, the mules will save the prime cost in twenty-three years of two teams of horses of three each, beside the interest; and will do the same work, during the whole time, at one-half the cost, beside the interest on the saving. If this calculation be a correct one, and we have entirely failed to detect the first flaw in it, taking into consideration the enormous number of boats, and the gigantic traffic, daily and hourly increasing, which pass through that grand artery of American commerce, the sums of money to be realized by the gain of this single substitution, baffle the powers of the imagination to conjecture them. It is sufficient to say, broadly, that it would require but a few years, far less than the lifetime of a single man, with that sum annually capitalized, and invested at compound interest, to pay the capital of the national debt of England! Of so vast importance to a country, in an economical and national point of view, may be and are the labors of the meanest of its animals!'

This 'item' (it is admitted to be stated 'broadly ') ought to have been included in Mr. SAMUEL RUGGLES' famous 'Canal Report.' Long live the JACKAss, and his posterity!

We publish the following

CORRECTION: BY A MICHIGAN CORRESPONDENT. correction from a Detroit correspondent, with pleasure:

'DEAR SIR: The statement given some time since in your 'EDITOR'S Table' of the method of administering law, at an early day, in the Territory of Michigan, is not altogether correct; and from the fact of its being published in your Magazine, it may acquire an authenticity which the truth does not warrant: allow me to furnish you an account of the transaction, obtained from a reliable source.

'In 1821, KETAUKO, a Chippewa Indian, was charged with the murder of Dr. W. S. MADISON, a surgeon in the United States army. The crime was committed in the northern part of the territory, in a district of country to which the Indian title was not extinguished. On the trial, the Indian's counsel interposed a plea to the jurisdiction of the court, alleging that the courts of the United States could not take cognizance of crimes committed in the Indian country. The court overruled the objection. The trial proceeded; and the Indian was found guilty, and in pursuance of the sentence of the court, was hung in the city of Detroit on the twenty-seventh day of December, 1821.

'Previously to this, there was another case, where an Indian named PETOBIG was tried for murder, and was found guilty, but was not punished with death or otherwise. The facts, as appeared on trial, were these: Three persons, one of whom was PETOBIG, were descending the Detroit River in a canoe; PETOBIG fell overboard, at which one of his companions laughed. On regaining the boat, PETOBIG seized a gun which was lying in it, and shot the man dead who laughed at him when he was in the water. For this, he was tried and convicted; but the judges were not satisfied from the evidence that the crime was committed on the American side of the boundary-line, in the Detroit River, between the United States and England. For this reason, sentence was not pronounced upon the Indian.

'The statement in your 'Table' evidently has reference to one of the above cases, but is not in accordance with either. As these reminiscences of early times become in the lapse of time to be regarded as historical data, it is well to have them set forth correctly. W. T. Y.'

THE AUTOCRAT' ON FACTS: THE OLD MAN DREAMS.'· As compared with himself, the 'AUTOCRAT' of the 'Atlantic' (WENDELL, 'my KING!') does n't 'bite' quite so sharply this month, as in preceding papers. However, old HOMER sometimes nodded: and yet a nod from him was as good as a wink from the best of his contemporaries. Perpend a few of the AUTOCRAT's last ‘out-givings:'

'SCIENTIFIC knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind; not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his 'mug.' Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yield a hair's breadth; every thing must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability-and most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities is provided with buffers at both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this must reäct on the minds that handle these forms of truth.

'Oh! you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of sciences I am referring to. I know that as well as you. But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half-dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain noted institution at South-Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School, contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization, notwithstanding.'

If there should ever be a 'Governmental School for American Novelists' established in this country, we (being in congress at that time, if not before,) should cheerfully assist in assigning the presidency to the 'AUTOCRAT:' for do but hear him :

'SOME of you boarders ask me from time to time why I do n't write a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale.

That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons cannot write more than one novel- that all after that are likely to be failures. Life is so much more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that all records of human experience are as so many bound herbaria to the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do with books of human experience is to make them alive again with something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to tell a living story; and this is rare.

'Beside, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Oftentimes a single cradling gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an

individual of the human family, could write one novel or story at any rate, if I would.

'Why don't I, then? Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow-drift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable-in the opinion of the ladies.

'Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories among us, there is hardly one I can recall that has not drawn too faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared.'

Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses. You will understand by the title, that they are written in an imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough. I send it forth as 'OAK HALL' projects a coat, on à priori grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and nurtured it; that its mysterious compages or frame-work has survived its myriad exposures, and reached the stature of maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select the very locality where this audacious generalization has been acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration. Now hear the verses:

Let your 'laborious' rhythmic writers, your word-mumblers, (to themselves) your 'sound-poets,' try to imitate the foregoing: let them 'make an effort.'

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. How could Mr. K. N. PEPPER the father of a spurious poetical progeny, who never saw his face, and possess not a tithe of his genius, keep back so long from the world the interesting fact recorded in the subjoined graphic epistle, and the 'sunnit' which they preface? Surely, it could have been for no other reason than disgust at the temerity of the puny tribe of his imitators :

'North-Demosthenes, Sept. 15, 1857.

'MR. CLARK: i supoas you doant nede to be inform that 'i stil liv,' and am part ov the firm ov PEPPER & WALTERS, delers in Domestic Hapines, and sech: if you doo, hearbi taik notis to that efec: ime a nie naber ov fren PODDS, wich livs at the 4 corns.

'i rayther giv out, in mi las pome, that mi Muse hed been set fre, and coodent be cald on at site fur no moar inspirashun: wot may astonish you, i hev rote a litle pome without consultion ov her; bein a adres to my infan Sun, now severil months and a number ov days oald, and constanly gitin oalder. ef you thinc it wil do to print fur mi frens, and isent entyrely behynd mi oald stile, plese

6

'insert, and ablyge yours,

K. N. PEPPER.

'N. B. i coodent git it al into 14 lines, (wich makes a sunnit,) so ive rote the rest into proas.

เ

'SUNNIT TO ΜΙ LITLE SUN PETER.

'WELCUM, Swete cus, to your faither's family-sercle!
Sech litle Red republicans as you

Wercs revolooshuns every wers, 't is true.

Taik your oan faither, now, wich rote 'The Tirkle,'

Weelbarer,' and a few moar sech pomes:

youv maid him hapy; but youv spylt his genus.

No moar imortle Wercs! but PETE, betweene us,

i shel git up a practicle werc, on Hoams,

With cullerd cuts (youm 1) on evry shete.

ile call it PEPPER's last and graitest Aim,

(1 wich i rayther thinc is hard to bete.)

Domestic Hapines shel be the naim :

inspyred bi HANAH GANE, your nateral mother,
and rote bi your faither, onles youv got sum uther
parrent, wich aint lykely. PETER! gro up, and maik
a distinguish man-is the prar ov your

'loving faither,

K. N. P.

K. N. PEPPER.

'N. B. in a few yeres you will leve milk and sech, and ete mete, growin strong in boddy and honisty: peraps bein abel in tyme to wip your oald faither.'

'K. N. P.

LET your heart take in the following, reader, and then we will tell you who

wrote it:

THE true being and end of womankind is love; and from this, if I may so speak, all their sorrows, if they pervert that holy and heavenly passion, directly proceed. I reverence the principle of love in woman. It seems, indeed, the atmosphere in

which she lives, and moves, and has her being. The arms and wings of her spirit seem ever reaching and panting to clasp to her bosom, and brood over, some object of human affection. In the smile of her lip, in the glance of her eye, in the soft and bewildering melody of her voice, we find but the semblances and echoes of the Spirit of Love. She delights to minister to our comforts; to invest our path-way with the roses of delicate enjoyment; to lend sun-shine to the hearth, and repose to the evening hour. I have never thought upon the gentle and unobtrusive influence of woman, without feelings of the deepest admiration. She seldom hates. When she is wronged, she is forgiving; when destroyed, she still turns with an eye of earnest regret to that paradise of innocence from which her passions have driven her; and in solitude, by day or at evening, 'she waters her cheek in tears without measure.'

meet, as in its natural centre. For resolute affection, strugFor that overflowing fulness

'In woman, all that is sacred and lovely seems to Do we look for self-deniall. See the devoted wife. gling through countless trials? Behold the lover. of fond idolatry which gives to things of earth a devotion like that which should ascend to GOD? Behold the mother, at the cradle of her infant, or pillowing its drowsy eye-lid on her bosom; supremely blest to see its fair cheek rise and fall upon the white and heaving orb, where it finds nourishment and rest! This is woman: always loving: always beloved. Well may the poet strike his lyre in her praise; well may the warrior rush to the battle-field for her smile; well may the student trim his lamp to kindle her passionate heart, or warm her dainty imagination she deserves them all. Last at the cross and earliest at the grave of the SAVIOUR, she teaches to those who have lived since His sufferings, the inestimable virtue of constant affection. I love to see her by the couch of sickness; sustaining the fainting head; offering to the parched lip its cordial, to the craving palate its simple nourishment; treading with noiseless assiduity around the solemn curtains, and complying with the wish of the invalid when he says:

'LET me not have this gloomy view
About my room, about my bed:
But blooming roses, wet with dew,
To cool my burning brow instead: '

disposing the sun-light upon the pale forehead, bathing the hair with ointments, and letting in upon it from the summer casement the sweet breath of Heaven!' How lovely are such exhibitions of ever-during constancy and faith! how they appeal to the soul! —like the lover in the Canticles, whose fingers, when she rose to open the door to her beloved, dropped 'with sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock!' No man of sensibility, I take it, after battling with the perplexities of the out-door world, but retires with a feeling of refreshment to his happy fire-side: he hears with joy the lisp of the cherub urchin that climbs upon his knee, to tell him some wonderful tale about nothing, or feels with delight the soft breath of some young daughter, whose downy, peach-like cheek is glowing close to his own. I am neither a husband nor a father: but I can easily fancy the feeling of supreme pleasure which either must experience. Let us survey the world of business: what go we out for to see?' The reed of ambition, shaken by the breath of the multitude; cold-hearted traders and brokers, traffickers and over-reachers, anxious each to circumvent his fellow, and turn to his own purse the golden tide in which all would dabble. Look at the homes of most of these. There the wife waits for her husband; and while she feels that anxiety for his presence which may be called the hunger of the heart, she feeds her spirit with 14

VOL. LI.