offers to the world, month after month, such dis- Trinity to the San Antonio, easterly and westerplay of littleness? If there ever was a time when ly, camping out much of the time; and notwithour Republic should wear an air of dignity-the standing all these favorable opportunities to make dignity of conscious strength and well-ordered the acquaintance of all the snakes in Texas, he has growth-it surely should be in these times of trial seen but two centipedes and one tarantula, only to the old, and what we reckon the ill-formed na-one rattlesnake, and "nary one copper-head." It tionalities of Europe. is very obvious, therefore-as this observing and extensively-traveled Texan has never come across the serpents, and so forth--that they can not be as numerous as our former correspondent supposed, and the readers of the Magazine may safely travel in those parts if they are so disposed.

Yet what spectacle do we offer! Petty strifes and miserable personalities have brought down our legislative assembly to the level of every honest man's pity! And that national voice-that people's voice, which we have reckoned on too fondly as the exponent of freedom and individual dignity (in these days of trial)-where is it?

Lost in idle votes for Mr. Banks, and Mr. Orr, and Mr. What-d'ye-call-'em!

Editor's Drawer.

THE extremest case of human weakness on record is that of the poet and wit Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was prevented from delivering a lecture on account of illness, and wrote to the Committee a letter of apology, in which he says, "I am satisfied that if I were offered a fifty-dollar bill after my lecture, I should not have strength enough

MARS is the god of MARCH, but there is little left to refuse it."

of war that Drawer ever brings. It may be that the reign of the god of war in this month explains the phenomena of so many storms that the almanacs with so much certainty and regularity predict; but however it is with the weather, we are concerned with the march of time, and the march of mind, leaving the march of armies to the men who manage them, and who are fond of the glory that is got by being shot through the neck and having your name spelled wrong in the newspaper. This reminds us of the "Dead March in Saul," and that reminds us of an incident which we do not believe, though we have the authority of the Home Journal for it, which ought not to tell such a story unless it were true. That journal, devoted in great part to the ladies, tells us that a lady playing on a pianoforte, on being called upon for a dead march, asked a celebrated professor of music what she should play? He replied, "Any march that you may play will be a dead one, for you are sure to murder it!"—a speech so rude, we venture to say, no man with music in his soul ever made. To march him out of the room, quick-step, would have been a very gentle punishment for such an offense.

In England they turn out to the left, and so
"The laws of the Road are a paradox quite,
For when you are traveling along,

If you keep to the LEFT you're sure to be RIGHT,
If you keep to the RIGHT you'll be WRONG!"

GOVERNOR SNYDER, the governor of the Keystone State, was sitting comfortably in his parlor at Selinsgrove, his rural abode, the cares of state sitting lightly on his breast, for he had just left his dinner-table and felt at peace with all the world, when a knock was heard at the front door, and Patrick O'Hannegan was ushered into the presence of the good-natured Governor.

"Guvner Snyder, I suppose," said Pat, with an attempt at an elegant bow.

"So I am called: pray be seated, and tell me what I can do for you to-day."

Pat cast a look around the room, rubbed his knees as he sat down on the edge of the chair, and after a few moments' hesitation he began on this wise:

"Wa'al, Guvner, it's about six years since I came till this country, and I've been a-livin' all that time up there on Lycomin' Creek, and I thought it was about time I was goin' home till the ould country, to see my poor ould mother, God bless her! before she dies, and all my ould friends there; and so I'm on my way, you see; and I thought, as I had heard people talkin' a great deal about Guvner Snyder, and what a great guvner he was, that I would call and pay my respects till him." Here Pat took a rest, and began again: "And so I'll be goin' to Philadelfy, and a good long step it is to

And it was in immediate juxtaposition that the same paper describes the following marches in the "battle of life." "Courtship is the engagement or siege; the proposal is the assault; the engagement is the surrender; and marriage celebrates the victory." And what comes after matrimony? "Why," says this ungallant writer, "I am sure I don't know, unless the Te Deum (the tedium) that comes after most victories." One can not help feeling some compassion for the poor fellow whose experiences lead him to such records. Let us leave him "alone in his glory," and MARCH on to some-go afoot, and then I'll go to New York, and go thing better.

AND not much better will it be; for we take up a letter from a gentleman in Texas, who has been reading in the Drawer a statement concerning a "pleasant region" in that new and fast-rising State, where the snakes of all kinds, and the spiders whose bite is death, and a general assortment of poisonous reptiles too numerous to mention, are said to abound; and the writer now desires us to say, lest nervous and thin-skinned people should be deterred from coming to Texas, that he has actually lived two whole years in Texas, and traveled through it from its northern to its southern boundary; from Red River to the Gulf of Mexico; from the

aboard a ship, and sail till ould Ireland, and [here he took a long look at the sideboard sparkling with its well-filled decanters] when I see my ould mother, and all my ould friends, I'll tell them how I called on the guvner of Pinsylvany, and how he was mighty polite, and give me a glass of brandy to drink his Honor's health."

The Governor took the hint, and filled a glass, which Pat emptied as soon, saying, "Your good health, Guvner, and long life till ye, and all your kith and kin!"

Down sat Pat again, and after answering a few kind inquiries of the Governor, he rose and spoke: "Wa'al, I 'spose I must be movin'. I'm goin' from here to Philadelfy, and it's a long step to go afoot,

and from there I'll go till New York, and then I'll go aboard a ship to ould Ireland, and there I'll tell all my ould friends that here I called on the great guvner of Pinsylvany, and he give me two glasses of brandy to drink his Honor's health."

The Governor was caught, and poured out the second glass, which loosened the other end of Pat's tongue, and he went over the rigmarole again, ending with three glasses of brandy!

"Ah," said the Governor, "but you have not had three glasses!"

Pat was all cut up and cut down by this unexpected answer. He pushed his fingers through his hair, dropped his lower jaw, and looked like a deeply wounded "jintleman" as he was. A happy thought hit him, and brightening up he said, "But you would'nt have me tell my ould mother a lie, would you?"

The good Governor was melted for a moment, and the third glass passed from the sideboard into the longing bosom of the dry Irishman, who drank, and thus began:

"A thousand thanks, Guvner! the saints bless and the Virgin kape you, and give you long life and plenty of such brandy as this, your Honor! and now I'll be goin' to Philadelfy, and it's a long way there afoot, and then-"

The Governor could stand it no longer, but halflaughing, and half-mad at the impudence of Pat and his own readiness to be coaxed, he showed his guest to the door, and told him, as it was so far to Philadelfy, he had better be making tracks in that direction without any more delay.

wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry LONG at the wine.'. And now I have proved that if a man drinks too much rum, his eyes will turn red and be painful; and he will babble and talk vain things; and he will have contentions, and wound himself or get wounded when there is no cause for it; and when the rum has done its work, and he becomes sober, he will be sad and sorrowful.

"Improvement. And now, my hearers, I meant this sermon for you; and you ought to hear it, and consider of it, and believe it, and not be mighty to drink wine and rum. For you will get up your teams, and you will go down to Boston, and you will stop at the taverns, and you will drink rum, and you will get drunk, and you will fall down, and you will roll over, and you will act more like beasts than like men. Though I must confess that it is good to take a drop now and then, and I must confess that if a man don't drink enough to feel it, he may as well drink none at all."

And a good deal better drink none at all is the doctrine of the present; but this sermon was preached seventy years ago. And, as the boy said, "Times ain't now as they used to was."

DID you ever observe the change that is gradually made in the style of our cravats as we grow in years? Up to the age of ten our necks are left at liberty. As far as eighteen the cravat is a matter of utility. From twenty to twenty-five it is an article of taste; at thirty it is an object of study; at forty it is a work of art. Having passed this age, our pretensions to elegance have become extinct; It was very hard work to get the right answer our cravat does as it likes; we take no heed of it; out of the boy whom a traveler on horseback found it gets flabby and humiliated; the shirt-collar rides at work in a field of miserable, yellow, sickly-look-rough-shod over it, or it becomes a kind of bag, in ing corn that ought to be sent to the springs for which we bury the chin, the mouth, and sometimes its health. the end of the nose.

"Your corn looks very yellow," said the traveler, as he stopped in his ride and talked to the boy over the fence.

"Yaas," said the boy; "it was the yaller kind we planted."

SMALL wits, who seek to make themselves merry at the expense of the clergy, are sometimes wellcome up with, as in the case of the English merchant's traveling clerk in a rail-car with a clerical

"And it's mighty small, too," the traveler con- gentleman who had given him no occasion to be tinued.

impertinent. But the conceited youngster thought

"In course," said the boy, 'cause we planted to show his wit by asking: the small kind of corn."

"Does your reverence know the difference be

"Yes, yes, I know; but I don't think you'll have tween a priest and an ass?" over half a crop; do you?"

"Why, no, in course we shan't; cause for we planted this ere field at the halves."

66

"No, I do not," returned the priest. "Why," said the young man, one carries a cross on his breast, and the other a cross on his

“Good-by," said the traveler; "I think you'll back ?" do for seed."

But the boy would not let him off so. Calling him back after he had got on a few rods, the boy cried out:

"I say, stranger, I hope you pick up a deal of valuable information in the course of your travels."

THE Temperance Reform does not date as far back as 1785, but a correspondent vouches for the correctness of the following report of a sermon preached in that year, in the County of Middlesex, Massachusetts:

"And now," said the priest, "do you know the difference between a conceited young man and an ass ?"

"No, I do not, I am sure," said the youth. "Nor I either," said the priest, and the applause of the passengers sealed the retort and rebuke.

THERE are some districts of country in enlightened England, even at this day, where the light of knowledge has not become so bright as to render further increase impossible, as will be inferred from the following well-attested fact. A clergyman was preaching in a hamlet where the families were all weavers, working at home, and by the very hurtful to a man to drink piece, for which they were paid by the employers in a neighboring town. The preacher took for his text those beautiful words from the sermon on the mount, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven," and explain

"Text. Isaiah v. 22: 'Woe unto them who are mighty to drink wine.' "Doctrine. It strong drink to excess.

"Proofs. 1st. The text. 2d. Proverbs, xxiii. 29: Who hath woe? who hath sorrows? who hath contentions? who hath babblings? who hath

ed it to the great dissatisfaction and regret of the | think I have seen you here before: I must send you whole community, who up to that time had always up. The fact is, stealing is a vice which is becomsupposed the blessing to have been pronounced ing altogether too common in this community. I must upon people like themselves, who were piece-mak- send you up for six months." ers, and specially mentioned by the Lord! It was in vain that the good clergyman sought to show them how they might still enjoy the blessing; the charm of the passage was gone, now they knew it had no specific reference to men of their cloth.

At one time the Recorder himself was "up" at Blackwell's Island, on one of those junketing excursions in which the City Fathers often indulge even in these days of no liquor and reform. In the old times, when Dicky Riker reigned, they used to stay all night out there and have a "regu

LOVE'S ART GALLERY is very well drawn in the lar time of it," lingering two or three days, and following lines by a new contributor:

taking the matter quietly. On one of these occasions the Recorder needed the services of a barber to put a smooth face on his Honor before he returned to the city, but unhappily there was no knight of the razor on the Island except the prisoner who did the shaving for his fellow-convicts. To him the Recorder was therefore obliged to submit himself, but with some misgivings. He took his seat, shut his eyes, and the white foam soon lay like snow on the hills and vales of the Recorder's face. The criminal barber now took his customer gently by the nose, and with the other hand raised the razor to commence operations. The Recorder opened his eyes, and, as they rested on the face of the Island barber, a flash of dim recognition for an instant lighted them up, and, in his blandest tones, he said:

"My friend, what unfortunate circumstance has brought you here ?"

The barber scowled savagely, and, with a profane expression for a preface, he replied with great earnestness and spite,

"No unfortunate circumstance at all, Sir; you sent me here. A man stands no chance at all in your hands; but you are in mine just now."

And as he said this, with a quick movement he dipped the razor into a cup of boiling water that was standing on a stove at hand, and drew the hot back of it, with all his might, across the bare throat of the Recorder, as it lay temptingly before him.

"Murder! murder!" roared the judge, as he sprang from the chair, gathering up the towel close about his neck and sinking down again, in the full conviction that he was a dead man. His shout had raised the house; the prison officers and aldermen came rushing in to know what was the matter.

"Don't you see the blood," faintly gasped the dying Recorder, as he pressed the linen more closely to the gaping wound to stanch the crimson current! His friends loosened his grasp, removed the towel, and assured him there was some great mistake, for his neck was innocent of blood. Sensible at last that such was the case, the Recorder slowly let the towel fall, recovered his breath, drew his hand lightly across his throat to assure himself that it was all right, and then, while the rest indulged themselves in a hearty laugh, he solemnly said to the barber,

"Young man, you took me by surprise. I was not quite ready to be murdered; jests are good, but such jests as these should not become too common in the community."

RICHARD RIKER, or, as he has come down to us, Dicky Riker, as Recorder of the City of New York, has recorded his own name among the names that the people will not willingly let die. The good things he said, and the better things he did, are among the legacies of the public; and every now and then the newspapers tell them over and over, THIS anecdote of our ancient Recorder reminds as they are called up by the passing events of our us of a revolutionary incident, not written in any own days. He is the father of an expression often of the books, but admirably illustrative of the spirused without reference to its paternity; but there it of those times when boys as well as men were are many still living who have heard him address- heroes, and the spirit of patriotism burned like ing many a prisoner in such words as these: that of martyrdom in all hearts. The British "Young man! I am sorry to see you here: I army were in possession of the city of New York.

"Now, my boy, shave me, and, by the Lord Harry, if you draw one drop of blood on my face, with your blundering work, I will run that sword through your body: you hear, do you; and now take care how you work."

The

Petty tyrannies were, of course, not unusual, and | sonal and political friend, and following him blindsometimes they became very capricious and intol-ly as an infallible guide. He was a very eccentric erable. An officer entered a barber's shop, where man, and his peculiarities had perhaps led the peoonly a boy was in attendance, and after a deal of ple to call him Uncle Jacob,' by which name he blustering and swearing because the master was was better known than that of Marvin. Bitter in out, he drew his sword, laid it on the table with his prejudices and strong in his attachments, he much flourish, and thus addressed the lad: could see no right in an enemy, no wrong in a friend. On the other hand, Mr. Yancy was one of the most amiable and candid of men. strength of his mind, combined with the tolerance of his feelings, raised him above the meanness of clinging to error when reason opposed it. In the discussion that ensued, Mr. Calhoun's arguments overpowered him, and he candidly confessed himseif a convert to his great rival's opinions. Great was the rage of 'Uncle Jacob' when he heard that Yancy had struck his colors to Calhoun. He swore a big oath that he would thrash Calhoun if the story was true. He soon found that it was so, and started at once to put his threat into execution.

The lad proceeded deliberately with his business, and shaved the officer as well as he could, and fortunately without nicking the skin of the elegant Englishman, who surveyed himself in the glass, and again addressed the youngster:

"Now tell me how you dared to shave me at all, after I had threatened to kill you if you cut my face ?"

"Because," said the boy, "I knew I had the advantage of you; for if I had been so unfortunate as to nick your chin, I would have cut your throat from ear to ear!"

The cold sweat broke out on the officer's brow at the thought of his own escape, and he marched out of the shop, wondering at the race of rebels with whom his country had to contend.

"He found Mr. Calhoun walking slowly and calmly back and forth, for exercise, on the piazza of the hotel where he was boarding. Mr. Calhoun had been informed of Marvin's intention, and as soon as he saw him coming, prepared himself for a triumph, not of force, but of manner and address. Marvin took his stand where Mr. Calhoun was to pass, and awaited the trying moment. Mr. Calhoun approached, spoke kindly, and passed on with A CORRESPONDENT says that he has seen the his blandest smile. Again he passed, and again, first part of the following story in the New York each time repeating his soothing salutation, and Observer, and he thinks the latter part, though bor-expecting the man to commence his attack. But dering on the profane, is worth preserving as showing the "Spirit of '76."

During the hard-fought battle of Bennington, two brothers fought side by side, protected by the trunk of a fallen tree. The oldest was a man of prayer, but the other was not. Baum's Indian allies were in ambush, picking off the Americans, when the elder brother got sight of one of them, and, taking a long aim, lifted up heart and voice in prayer, saying, "Lord have mercy on that Indian's soul!" and buried his bullet in the red-skin's brain. The other brother got a shot at another Indian at the same moment, and as his ball entered his head, he bit off the end of his cartridge to load again, and said, "There's another Indian gone to hell!"

FEW anecdotes of the late Hon. John C. Calhoun are floating in the public mind. He was not a man of the people, but his genius and his habits placed him above the masses, whom he nevertheless held with a fascination as hard to explain as to resist. The following has never been published, and though it is not one of humor, it is remarkably characteristic of Mr. Calhoun, and well deserves to be repeated:

"In the early days of his political career, Mr. Calhoun had a powerful rival and opponent in the Abbeville District. South Carolina was at this time in a state of high excitement, and party feeling raged fiercely in a struggle to overthrow an aristocratic feature of the constitution. The issue was upon topics that enlisted the interests and prejudices of parties, and they waged the contest with the energy of a civil war. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Yancy were on opposite sides, the leaders of hostile bands, and the idols of their respective hosts. There was, and is, for he still lives, a man named Marvin, one of the most violent of Mr. Yancy's party, warmly attached to him as a per

a strange fascination had seized upon 'Uncle Jacob.' The spell which genius throws over those who approach it, had unmanned him. At last he could stand it no longer, but bursting into tears, he grasped the proffered hand of Mr. Calhoun, told him frankly the errand on which he had come, and begged his pardon. Mr. Calhoun then began to press his arguments cautiously but forcibly, and in a few minutes Marvin was one of his converts, and a decided friend. From that day onward Mr. Calhoun had no more ardent follower than Marvin, and of all ‘rabid nullifiers' Uncle Jacob was the rabidest, and to this day he believes there never was such a man in this world as that same John C. Calhoun whom he tried to whip, and who conquered him without raising a finger or saying a word."

The writer of this admirable incident adds, that if the ambition of Mr. Calhoun had not been chastened by exalted virtue, he would have possessed an influence over men dangerous to his country.

THE precocious lad who invented the following conundrum has had ice on his head for some days, and it is thought he will recover if kept quiet a week or so:

"Why is an elephant unlike a tree?

"Because a tree leaves in the spring, and the elephant leaves when the menagerie does."

THOMAS JEFFERSON SOLE, an independent farmer, writes the following letter to the county newspaper. His complaints are reasonable, and we trust he will soon find a teacher to his taste:

"Mr. Editor-I have ben sendin' my dater Nancy to scool to a scoolmaster in this naborhood. Last Friday I went over to the scool just to see how Nancy was gettin' along, and I sees things I didn't like by no means. The scoolmaster was larnin' her things entirely out of the line of eddycation,

and as I think improper. I set a while in the

You'll

"Very near it," said the stranger. "The truth scoolhouse and heerd one clas say ther lesson. They is, I am a Presbyterian myself, but my horse, the was a-spellen, and I thot spelled quite exceedingly. | noble fellow, is a decided Episcopalian. Then cum Nancy's turn to say her lesson. She take good care of him, won't you?" said it very spry. I was shot! and determined she should leave that scool. I have heerd that gramer was an oncommon fine study, but I don't want eny more gramer about my house. The lesson that Nancy sed was nothing but the foolishest kind uv talk, the ridicles luv talk you ever seed. She got up, and the first word she sed was:

I love!

THAT was a very fair retort of a pretty girl, annoyed by the impertinences of a conceited beau at a wedding party:

"Do you know what I was thinking of all the time during the ceremony ?" he asked.

"No, Sir, how should I?"

"Why I was blessing my stars that I was not

"I looked rite at her hard for doin' so improper, the bridegroom." but she went rite on and sed:

Thou lovest,
He loves,

and I reckon you never heerd such a riggermyrole in your life-love, love, love, and nothin' but love. She sed one time,

I did love.

"Ses I, 'who did you love?' Then the schollars laffed, but I wasn't to be put off, and I sed, who did you love, Nancy? I want to knowwho did you love?' The scoolmaster, Mr. M'Quillister, put in and sed he wood explane when Nancy finished the lesson. This sorter pacyfied me, and Nancy went on with awful love talk. It got wus and wus every word. She sed:

I might, could, or would love.

"I stopped her again, and sed I reckon I would see about that, and told her to walk out of that house. The scoolmaster tried to interfere, but I wouldent let him say a word. He sed I was a fool, and I nockt him down and made him holler in short order. I taukt the strate thing to him. I told him I'd show him how he'd larn my dater gramer. "I got the nabers together and we sent Mr. M'Quillister off in a hurry, and I reckon thar'l be no more gramer teechin' in thees parts soon. If you know of any rather oldish man in your regeen that doant teech gramer, we wood be glad if you wood send him up. But in the footure we will be keerful how we employ men. Yung scoolmasters wont do, especially if they teeches gramer. bad thing for morils. Yours till deth. "THOMAS JEFFERSON SOLE."

It's a

"And I have no doubt the bride was doing the same thing," said the girl, and left him to think it over again.

As a general thing we hate parodies, for the same reason that we hate a clam-it seems a miserable attempt to be an oyster; but the following, for a parody, is very fair:

MY OLD STRAW HAT.

A Parody on "The Old Arm-Chair.”
"I love it, I love it, and what of that,

Who'll chide me for loving that old straw hat?
I've gazed on it oft with unspeakable pleasure;
I've preserved it long as a sacred treasure;
I've guarded it long with tender care;
'Twas the gift of a maiden so loved and fair--
Her fingers have woven each delicate plait,
And a sacred thing is that old straw hat.
"I love it, I love it, and who will say

That I should now cast that old hat away?
It hath circled my head where the sea-winds blow,
It hath shielded my hair from the mountain snow;
From noonday sun it hath sheltered my brow,
And think ye when old I'll desert it now?
In sunshine and storm, and in wintry weather,
That old hat and I have been friends together.
"I'll cling to it fondly yet many a day,

Till my eyes grow dim and my locks are gray;
And when Death's cold shaft to my bosom hath sped,
It shall moulder unseen in my earth-bound bed.
It tells me that life's parting sands run fast,
That earth's choicest gifts not long can last,
And I joy that a lesson so pure as that

May be gleaned from the fate of my old straw hat."

AN ear-witness of the following sends it to us from the shades of Harvard University :

In the Court of Common Pleas in Boston, Thomas Brown brought his action against James Turner, both of them being gentlemen of color, to recover some goods which Turner alleged in his de

Ir is astonishing how far some men will allow their feelings of religious sectarianism to carry them. There was John Munson, or "old Munson," as he was known all the way from New York to Albany in those times when steamboats were rare, and railroads unheard of, who kept tavern at Poughkeepsie, on the "old Post road." John Mun-fense he had bought of Brown by a regular bill of son was a rare old Churchman, a Church of England man, of the straightest, strictest sort, and it became a well understood fact, that he would always treat his Episcopal guests to the best his house afforded, and rather slight the "Dissenters," as he reckoned all other people.

It chanced one day that a stranger on horseback, who had heard of Munson's peculiarity, called at his house for lodging, and was riding a splendid horse, of which he was remarkably fond, and required to be well taken care of wherever he put up. The attentive landlord met the stranger with his beaming smile, who, as soon as he dismounted, began:

Mr.

sale. It became necessary for Turner to prove the handwriting of Brown to said bill. A number of witnesses were called who failed to prove it. Morris, the counsel for defense, now called, with a triumphant air, for Mr. John Wright, a man as black as night, who took his place on the stand, and showing the whites of his eyes, and a pure set of ivory, waited for the questions.

Mr. Counselor Morris speaks: "Did you ever see Brown write? John Wright replies: "Oh yes-ur, nummer o' times."

Mr. Morris (highly elated). "Well, how does that look ?" showing Brown's supposed signature. Mr. Wright holds up both hands, and exclaims,

“Ah, landlord, I hear you are a sound Church-"Oh, I knows nuffin' 'bout dat, Sur; I tho't you man, a true Episcopalian!" axes me,' Did you ever see Brown, Wright?' Dat's “That I am,” said Munson, “and I trust you my name; I seed Brown, but I neber seed Brown are the same." make his write; not at all; neber, Sur."