"I pay twice my own amount of bills. A John Smith lives next door, to whom half my choice rounds and sirloins, selected personally in the market-for I love good feed-are sent without distinction. My name is a bore, and my life a burden. Touching the debts I have paid which were not my own, they have harassed me beyond measure. Such is the perplexity arising from their constant and unavoidable occurrence, that I begin to think myself a member of that class of reprobates mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, who have been given up by Divine Providence to do those things which are not convenient.' "The last and crowning enormity was in being represented in the daily newspapers as having been clothes from different hotels!--and, although innocent and out of prison, yet it is almost as hard as confinement to have every other friend one meets ask him, 'How did you get out ?'-' When did you leave the Island?' and congratulating him upon having, after all, escaped the fangs of the law!" many friends of mine at a distance, out of compli-ing, and by rival tomb-stone cutters, desirous of a nient to their indefatigable exertions in procuring job to my memory,' from the surviving members new subscribers. This number should be further of my bachelor household. augmented by a permanent exchange list of sixtyfive, making in all a constant weekly circulation of one hundred and thirteen, besides an average of half a dozen surplus copies a week, which are sent with religious scrupulosity to postmasters and other distinguished individuals in benighted parts of the world. I have good grounds for estimating my reading patronage at forty-nine person's per copy. You may safely calculate that the 5537 readers of my paper would consume on an average ten dollars worth per annum, each, of your pills and ointment, particularly the pills, for I can not promise you an extensive sale of your ointment in this region, cutaneous diseases being rare, as may be inferred from the fact that the foreign born population of Mississippi is only one in sixty-two of the aggre-arrested and sent to Blackwell's Island for stealing gate. So you perceive I shall be the means of opening a market to you for $55,370 worth of the invaluable remedies which have immortal-lies-ed your name, on which, after deducting the cost of the materials, boxes, etc., your profit will be about eighty-five per cent, or $47,064 50. Upon this handsome increase of your profits, accruing through my instrumentality, I propose to charge the moderate commission of one per cent, or $473 623. If these terms do not suit you, come over by the next steamer, and we'll talk about it. If you are satisfied with them, for the first quarterly instalment of $117 66, be so good as to pay for me one year's subscription to Punch, Diogenes, and The Times, all of which are good papers, and should be encouraged, and send me the balance in cuttings of the London Particular Madeira grape-vine. Subsequent installments may be sent, at your option, in Bank of England notes, or any sort of truck except your medicines. Give my best respects to Queen Victoria, the next time you see her; tell her she is a lady whom I greatly esteem, and that I often think with what satisfaction, while this disastrous war is so thinning the population of her realms, she must reflect that she, at least, has done her duty in the way of keeping it up. Your obedient servant, THE EDITOR. ANY John Smith is to be pitied. He has no personal identity. He can not "hold property," not even an umbrella, with his name in it. What are post-offices and city dispatches to him? Listen for a moment to only a few of the annoyances which beset the John Smith "you read of" at this present: "I have been advertised in the newspapers; persecuted by females whom I knew not; had callow bantlings laid on my door-steps. In short, I have suffered every thing but death, and all for my name. I am still plodding along the vale of existence, looking at the bright steep of fame in the distance, knowing it "impossible to climb." My name hangs to my tail as heavy as the stone of Sysiphus. I almost wish I was entirely defunct! "IMPORTANT personages" are much more common in churches "over the water"-in the congregations, we mean-than they are in our republican country. This is very amusingly exemplified in the following: "Old Mr. R was the great man of a small neighborhood, and ‘patronized' a Protestant church in his vicinity. The congregation was small, and Mr. B had the most important face, and was altogether the most important personage in the church. The parson never commenced the service until he made his appearance. Sometimes the latter would fall asleep during the sermon; upon which the clergyman, out of respect to his patron, would pause awhile. Presently the old gentleman would wake up, rub his eyes, and exclaim, with a gentle wave of his hand, 'Go on, Sir-go on; I am with you!' Apropos of sermons, but more especially of long sermons, here is a "case in point:" We once knew a judge, "learned in the law," who, when at church (forgetting that he was not on the bench), invariably fell asleep. He always sat out the service, however, except on one occasion. It was a sultry summer afternoon; he had listened long, and slept patiently; but at length, in a pause of the discourse, which the dominie had split into twenty-four remaining parts, he opened the pew-door and walked out into the porch, where he was accosted, by a tired-out hearer like himself, with: "Why, what's the matter, Judge? what has brought you out?" "I am going for my night-gown and slippers," he replied; "for I find I must take up my quarters here to-night!" He should have stood his ground, looked at the minister, and-yawned! "I have got a home of my own, and am 'well to do in the world.' But I am not happy. I dis- PROFESSOR S. F. B. MORSE, the inventor of burse the postage for a weekly mass of letters, of Morse's Electric Telegraph, "known and honored" which three in five are intended for others. I read throughout the world, gave, on a recent public ocnotices concerning me, hymeneal and obituary, casion, a very interesting account of his struggles several times in a month. I have been waited in bringing the wonderful thing before the public, upon simultaneously by persons who had come to and in obtaining a grant from Congress to "try it” wish me joy, in the expectancy of a punch-drink-on a line between Washington and Baltimore Mr. Morse was in Washington, almost worn out with his incessant exertions, in endeavoring to procure the passage of his bill. It finally was got through the House, and for the rest-which is briefly stated- -we leave the great "Lightning School-teacher" to tell his own most interesting story: My bill had indeed passed the House of Representatives, and it was on the calendar of the Senate; but the evening of the last day had commenced with more than one hundred bills, to be considered and passed upon, before mine could be reached. "Wearied out with the anxiety of suspense, I consulted with one of my senatorial friends. He thought the chance of reaching it to be so small, that he advised me to consider it as lost. In a state of mind, gentlemen, which I must leave you to imagine, I returned to my lodgings, to make preparations for returning home the next day. "My funds were reduced to the fraction of a dollar. In the morning, as I was about to sit down to breakfast, the servant announced that a young lady desired to see me in the parlor. It was the daugh- | ter of my excellent friend and college class-mate, the Commissioner of Patents. She had called, she said, by her father's permission, and in the exuberance of her own joy, to announce to me the passage of my Telegraph Bill at midnight, but a moment before the Senate's adjournment! weathered many a tough gale together, but now we must part! You have been a good friend to me; I shall never find such another!" "ONE might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion," is an old maxim; but it is “wonderfully wonderful," as the man in the play has it, what changes there are in fashions. Just now, the wits are satirizing and laughing at the diminutive hats of the ladies. It was not exactly "the mode" in New England in the Good Old Colony times, if we may trust the Simple Cobbler of Agawan," who wrote in Massachusetts as early as 1647, as follows, of the ladies' dresses of that period: "I can make myselfe sick at any time with comparing the dazzling splendor wherewith our gentlewomen were embellished in some former habits with the goose-down wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. We have about five or six of them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I can not cleanse my phansie of them for a moneth after. It is enow to break the heart for to see our goodly women imprisoned in French cages, peering out of their hood-holes (big bonnets were the thing' in those days) for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody to relieve them. It is no marvel they weare drailes on the hinder-part of their heads, leaving nothing, "This was the turning-point of the Telegraph as it seems, in the fore-part but a few squirrel's Invention in America. brains, to help them frisk from one ill-favored "As an appropriate acknowledgment for the fashion to another. It is no little labor to be conyoung lady's sympathy and kindness-a sympathy tinually putting up English women into outlandwhich only a woman can feel and express-I prom-ish caskes; who, if they be not shifted anew, once ised that the first dispatch, by the first line of tele-in a few moneths, grow too sour for their husgraph from Washington to Baltimore, should be indited by her. To which she replied: 'Remember, now, I shall hold you to your word!' "In about a year from that time the line was completed; and every thing being prepared, I apprised my young friend of the fact. A note from her inclosed this dispatch: "What hath God wrought?' "These were the first words that passed on the first completed line of electric wires in America. None could have been chosen more in accordance with my own feelings. It baptized the American Telegraph with the name of its author." Ir will be hard to resist a tear to the memory of the brave, in reading the following incident, which occurred on board Perry's vessel, after the battle of Lake Erie : bands. "When I hear a nagiperous gentledame inquire what is the newest fashion of the Court, with desire to be in it in all haste, whatever it be, I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of the quarter of a cipher-the epitome of nothing!" The old Cobbler certainly does not mean by these compliments to indicate one of the strongminded women "of our day and generation!" SOME go to Church just for a walk, Some go there to laugh and talk, Some go there for observation, Some go there for speculation, Some go there to meet a friend, Some go there their time to spend, Some the impulse ne'er discover, Some go there to meet a lover, Some go there to sleep or nod, And some go there to worship God." One poor fellow was sent below to the surgeon, with his right arm dangling like an empty coatsleeve at his side. It had been shattered near the TALL oaks from little acorns grow: large streams shoulder, and amputation was pronounced un- from little fountains flow: a great matter a little avoidable. He bore the painful operation with-fire kindleth; and a score of other sayings assure out a groan or a murmur, although "cold drops of agony stood on his trembling flesh." An hour or two after his arm was amputated, he called the surgeon to his side, and said: "I should like to see my arm, if you have no objection." "None in the world," replied the surgeon, "if you desire it." us of the great effects that follow very slight causes, but we have scarcely met any thing more admirably illustrative of the fact, and, at the same time, of the adhesiveness of governments to old usages, than is given by Charles Dickens in his late reform speech: "Ages ago a mode of keeping accounts in the Exchequer by means of notched sticks was introduced. In the course of time the celebrated Cocker was born and died: then Walkinghame, the author of the Tutor's Assistant,' and a multitude of accountants, actuaries, and mathematicians, who disYou and I have covered and published means of account-keeping The amputated limb was at once brought to him, and poor Jack, pressing the cold hand which had "forgot its cunning" in his left, exclaimed, with tears in his eyes: "Farewell, old messmate! by ordinary arithmetic, far more ready, and which, in their every-day transactions, every body used; but official routine looked upon these notched sticks as part of the Constitution, and the Exchequer still continued to be kept by these willow tallies. But toward the end of the reign of George III., it occurred to some innovating and revolutionary spirit to suggest the abolition of this barbarous custom, and immediately all the red tape in all the public departments turned redder at the idea of so bold a conception; and it was not until the year 1826 that the custom of keeping these Exchequer accounts by willow tallies ceased. In 1834 it was found that a large accumulation of these tallies had grown up in the course of time, and the question arose what was to be done with these old worm-eaten, useless bits of wood? They were housed at Westminster. Common sense would have suggested that they should have been given to some of the poor miserable people who abounded in that neighborhood for fire-wood; but official routine could not endure that; and, accordingly, an order was given that they should be burned privately. They were burned in a stove in the House of Lords; but the stove, being overheated with them, set fire to the paneling of the room, the paneling set fire to the House of Lords, the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons, and the two Houses were reduced to ashes." It is admitted and mourned by many that a prohibitory law, by general acquiescence in its requirements, should not have proved more effective; but neither the friends nor the enemies of the "bill" will find any thing to complain of in the following playful exposition of the way in which the provisions of the law may be evaded. It is an extract from a "Maine Law Melody," and is supposed to be a modern midnight conversation between Spirits: "Humph!" said Brandy the Bold, I'm condemned to be sold No more in the way of a frolic; Only this very day, A chap over the way, To procure me, pretended a colic. When I saw myself pass In an ounce-measure glass, I felt such a measure improper; And with anger I Vow, For I've not a cork now, I exploded, and blew out my stopper." As I'm well known to be, should see a Note my name in the Pharmacopeia. To be sure, I am sold Just as much as of old, To many a 'dry' dropping-in gent.; Who makes a wry face, Says, Mine's a bad case, Just give me a pint of Astringent."" "As 'cock-tail' or 'sling' I'm not lawful; But for spasms' or 'giddiness,' Or pains in the kidneys, The way that I'm swallowed is awful!" "True!" quoth Rum; "just to see How the patients bolt me, With a phiz as if I was emetic; And, by way of a sham, Pass me off as a flam, By calling me Diaphoretic.'" Thus each one chimed in, That he thought it a sin With such nauseous new friends to be dwelling; And vile asafoetida smelling; And stuff for the bile, And many a quack mixture cried up: And one really brings his inside up. The foregoing would seem to indicate that many places have become very sickly since the passage of the Maine Law, which "were not so before." Some have even gone so far as to quote Saint Paul in favor of wine as remedy for a very "popular" ailment under the new law: "Take a little wine for the stomach-ache!" IT is not often that we encounter any thing which combines pathos and poetry to the same marvelous extent as in the following doleful ballad. We give but part of it, including one catastrophe, that of murder. The subsequent trial and execution of the criminal would be too much to bear at once. It is a choice specimen of Hoosier literature; and what is more, is from the pen of a schoolmaster: A SONG. On the death of Fuller, who was executed at Lawrence Which happened of late in the Indiana State On a hero who many did excele But she like Delilah when his heart she did ensnare A gold wring he gave her in token of love On the poesy was the image of the Dove His deportment was lovely he was handsome and trim But I am sorry for to say instead of a wedding day For this feeble minded maid she Vowed again to Wead Which was a fatal blow for it prooved his overthrow And added to her shame and disgrace For Satan through the hands of the Woman laid a snare To deprive these two heroes of their lives So young men be cautious be wise and be ware Of your Vows when you are coarting of your Wives For when Fuller came to hear that he was deprived of his dear Whom he had vowed by the powers for to Wead Young man you have injured me to gratify your cause Oh acknowledge you have wronged me or tho I Break the law Oh Warren I'le deprive you of your life! Then Warren he Replied your Request must be denied Unto your darling my heart it is bound And further I can say this is my wedding day In spite of all the heroes in Town Then fuller by the passion of Love and anger bound For at one fatal shot he killed Warren on the spot |