him. The truth is, we mix their greatness with all they say and give it our best attention. Johannes Faber sic cogitavit would be no enticing preface to a book, but an accredited name gives credit like the signature to a note of hand. It is the advantage of fame that it is always privileged to take the world by the button, and a thing is weightier for Shakespeare's uttering it by the whole amount of his personality.

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient with overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

People are apt to confound mere alertness of mind with attention. The one is but the flying abroad of all the faculties to the open doors and windows at every passing rumor; the other is the concentration of every one of them in a single focus, as in the alchemist over his alembic at the moment of expected projection. Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.

One

Do not look for the Millennium as imminent. generation is apt to get all the wear it can out of the cast clothes of the last, and is always sure to use up every paling of the old fence that will hold a nail in building the new.

You suspect a kind of vanity in my genealogical enthusiasm. Perhaps you are right; but it is a universal foible. Where it does not show itself in a personal and private way, it becomes public and gregarious. We flatter ourselves in the Pilgrim Fathers, and the Virginian

offshoot of a transported convict swells with the fancy of a cavalier ancestry. Pride of birth, I have noticed, takes two forms. One complacently traces himself up to a coronet; another, defiantly, to a lapstone. The sentiment is precisely the same in both cases, only that one is the positive and the other the negative pole of it.

Seeing a goat the other day kneeling in order to graze with less trouble, it seemed to me a type of the common notion of prayer. Most people are ready enough to go down on their knees for material blessings, but how few for those spiritual gifts which alone are an answer to our orisons, if we but knew it !

Some people, nowadays, seem to have hit upon a new moralization of the moth and the candle. They would lock up the light of Truth, lest poor Psyche should put it out in her effort to draw nigh to it.

No. X.

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

DEAR SIR, Your letter come to han'

Requestin' me to please be funny;
But I ain't made upon a plan

Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey:
Ther''s times the world doos look so queer,
Odd fancies come afore I call 'em ;

An' then agin, for half a year,

No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn.

You're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute,
Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish,
An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit,
I'd take an' citify my English.
I ken write long-tailed, ef I please,
But when I'm jokin', no, I thankee;
Then, 'fore I know it, my idees

Run helter-skelter into Yankee.

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme,
I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin';
The parson's books, life, death, an' time

Hev took some trouble with my schoolin';

Nor th' airth don't git put out with me,

Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman;

Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree
But half forgives my bein' human.

An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way

Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay,

While book-froth seems to whet your hunger; For puttin' in a downright lick

'twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can metch it,

An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick
Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet.

But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all,

For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; Idees you hev to shove an' haul

Like a druv pig ain't wuth a mullein: Live thoughts ain't sent for; thru all rifts O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards,

Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts

Feel thet th' old airth 's a-wheelin' sunwards.

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick

Ez office-seekers arter 'lection,

An' into ary place 'ould stick

Without no bother nor objection;
But sence the war my thoughts hang back
Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em,
An' subs'tutes, they don't never lack,

But then they'll slope afore you 've mist 'em.

Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz;
I can't see wut there is to hender,

An' yit my brains jes' go buzz, buzz,
Like bumblebees agin a winder;
'fore these times come, in all airth's row,
Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in,
Where I could hide an' think,

but now

It's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'.

Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white,

Walk the col' starlight into summer; Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell

O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.

I hev ben gladder o' sech things

Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover,

They filled my heart with livin' springs,
But now they seem to freeze 'em over;
Sights innercent ez babes on knee,
Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle,
Jes' coz they be so, seem to me

To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.

In-doors an' out by spells I try;

Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff and dry Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer 'n a clock, an' never carin', An' findin' nary thing to blame,

Is was than ef she took to swearin'.

Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant, But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n',

With Grant or Sherman ollers present;
The chimbleys shudder in the gale,

Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin'
Like a shot hawk, but all 's ez stale
To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.

Under the yaller-pines I house,

When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,

An' hear among their furry boughs

The baskin' west-wind purr contented,

While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low
Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin',
The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow,
Further an' further South retreatin'.