(My eldes' boy he's so took up, wut with the Ring tail Rangers

An' settin' in the Jestice - Court for welcomin' o' strangers";)

[He sot on me ;] "an' so, ef you'll jest ondertake

the care

Upon a mod'rit sellery, we 'll up an' call it square ; But ef you can't conclude," suz she, an' give a kin'

o' grin,

"Wy, the Gran' Jurymen, I 'xpect, 'll hev to set

agin."

That's the way metters stood at fust; now wut wuz I to du,

But jes' to make the best on 't an' off coat an' buckle tu?

Ther' ain't a livin' man thet finds an income necessarier

Than me,

bimeby I'll tell ye how I fin'lly come to merry her.

She hed another motive, tu: I mention of it here T'encourage lads thet's growin' up to study 'n'

persevere,

An' show 'em how much better 't pays to mind their winter-schoolin'

Than to go off on benders 'n' sech, an' waste their time in foolin';

Ef 't warn't for studyin' evenins, why, I never 'd

ha' ben here

An orn'ment o' saciety, in my approprut spear: She wanted somebody, ye see, o' taste an' cultiva

tion,

To talk along o' preachers when they stopt to the

plantation;

For folks in Dixie th't read an' rite, onless it is by

jarks,

Is skurce ez wut they wuz among th' origenle patri

archs;

To fit a feller f' wut they call the soshle higherarchy,

All thet you've gut to know is jes' beyund an evrage darky;

Schoolin''s wut they can't seem to stan', they 're tu consarned high-pressure,

An' knowin' t' much might spile a boy for bein' a Secesher.

We hain't no settled preachin' here, ner ministeril

taxes;

The min'ster's only settlement 's the carpet-bag he packs his

Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hymbook an' his Bible,

But they du preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib❜le!

They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric

ingine,

An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he's used to singein';

Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the

innards

To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' tough old sinhards!

But I must eend this letter now: 'fore long I'll send a fresh un ;

I've lots o' things to write about, perticklerly Se

ceshun :

I'm called off now to mission-work, to let a leetle

law in

To Cynthy's hide: an' so, till death,

Yourn,

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.

No. II.

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

JAALAM, 6th Jan., 1862.

GENTLEMEN,I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany, though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on New Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My third granddaughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis (a practice too much neglected in our modern systems of education), read aloud to me the excellent essay upon "Old Age," the authour of which I cannot help suspecting to be a young man who has never yet known what it was to have snow (canities morosa) upon his own roof.

Dissolve frigus, large super foco ligna reponens, is a rule for the young, whose wood-pile is yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the part of the publick (as I have reason to know from several letters of inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. Nihil humani alienum, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbors which is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more fitting season.

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry, and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest authour I know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in

the time of a Civil War worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is little better than καπνοῦ σκιᾶς ὄναρ. The plot was, as I believe, suggested by the "Twa Briggs" of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the last century, as that found its prototype in the "Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey" by Fergusson, though the metre of this latter be different by a foot in each verse. Perhaps the Two Dogs of Cervantes gave the first hint. I reminded my talented young parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose