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.

Do not look for the Millennium as imminent. One 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

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' turther South retreatin'.

Or up the slippery knob I strain

An' see a hundred hills like islan's
Lift their blue woods in broken chain
Out o' the sea o' snowy silence;
The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth,
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin'
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth
Of empty places set me thinkin'.

Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows,
An' rattles di'mon's from his granite;
Time wuz, he snatched away my prose,
An' into psalms or satires ran it;
But he, nor all the rest thet once

Started my blood to country-dances,
Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce
Thet hain't no use for dreams an'
fancies.

Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street

I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet

Thet follered once an' now are quiet, White feet ez snowdrops innercent,

Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.

Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee?
Did n't I love to see 'em growin',
Three likely lads ez wal could be,

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'?
I set an' look into the blaze
Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps
climbin',

Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways,

An' half despise myself for rhymin'.

Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth

On War's red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an' love an' youth

For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men

Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?

"Tain't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust

To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: Nothin' but tells us wut we miss,

Ther''s gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' thet world seems so fur from this

Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in !

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South,

For all they sot among the scorners: I'd sooner take my chance to stan'

At Jedgment where your meanest slave is,

Than at God's bar hol' up a han'

Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis !

Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud,

With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,

An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter!

Longin' for you, our sperits wilt

mews, ez Parson Willber allus called 'em, which is goin' to be the last an' stay the last onless sunthin' pertikler sh'd interfear which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence Mr. Wilbur's disease I hev n't hed no one thet could dror out my talons. He ust to kind o' wine me up an' set the penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I seemed to go on tick as it wear tell I run down, but the noo minister ain't of the same brewin' nor I can't seem to git ahold of no kine of huming nater in him but sort of slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a mow. Minnysteeril natur is wal enough an' a site better 'n most other kines I know on, but the other sort sech as Welbor hed wuz of the Lord's makin' an' naterally more wonderfle an' sweet tastin' least ways to me so fur as heerd from. He used to interdooce 'em smooth ez ile athout sayin' nothin' in pertickler an' I misdoubt he did n't set so much by the sec❜nd Ceres as wut he done by the Fust, fact, he let on onet thet his mine misgive him of a sort of fallin' off in spots. He wuz as outspoken as a norwester he wuz, but I tole him I

feller could ketch a good many times fust afore comin' bunt onto the ground as I see Jethro C. Swett from the meetin' house steeple up to th' old perrish, an' took up for dead but he 's alive now an' spry as wut you be. Turnin' of it over I recclected how they ust to put wut they called Argymunce onto the frunts of poymns, like poorches afore housen whare you could rest ye a spell whilst you wuz concludin' whether you'd go in or nut espeshully ware tha wuz darters, though I most allus found it the best plen to go in fust an' think afterwards an' the gals likes it best tu. I dno as speechis ever hez any argimunts to 'em, I never see none thet hed an' I guess they never du but tha must allus be a B'ginnin' to everythin' athout it is Etarnity so I'll begin rite away an' anybody may put it afore any of his speeches ef it soots an' welcome. I don't claim no paytent.

THE ARGYMUNT

Interdueshin, w'ich may be skipt. Begins by talkin' about himself: thet's jest natur an' most gin'ally allus pleasin', I

b'leeve I've notist, to one of the cumpany, an' thet's more than wut you can say of most speshes of talkin'. Nex' comes the gittin' the good will of the orjunce by lettin' 'em gether from wut you kind of ex'dentally let drop thet they air about East, A one, an' no mistaik, skare 'em up an' take 'em as they rise. Spring interdooced with a fiew approput flours. Speach finally begins witch nobuddy need n't feel obolygated to read as I never read 'em an' never shell this one ag'in. Subjick staited; expanded; delayted; extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited ag'in so 's to avide all mistaiks. Ginnle remarks; continooed; kerried on; pushed furder; kind o' gin out. Subjick restaited; dielooted; stirred up permiscoous. Pump ag'in. Gits back to where he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. Ketches into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks loose ag'in an' staits his subjick; stretches it; turns it; folds it; onfolds it; folds it ag'in so's 't no one can't find it. Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud to say nothin' in repleye. Gives him a real good dressin' an' is settysfide he's rite. Gits into Johnson's hair. No use tryin' to git into his head. Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag'in; doos it back'ards, sideways, eend ways, criss-cross, bevellin', noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. Concloods more. Reads some xtrax. his subjick a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. Tries to avide it. Wun't du. Misstates it. Can't conjectur' no other plawsable way of staytin' on it. Tries pump. No fx. Finely concloods to conclood. Yeels the flore.

Sees

You kin spall an' punctooate thet as you please. I allus do, it kind of puts a noo soot of close onto a word, thisere funattick spellin' doos an' takes 'em out of the prissen dress they wair in the Dixonary. Ef I squeeze the cents out of 'em it's the main thing, an' wut they wuz made for; wut's left 's jest pummis.

Mistur Wilbur sez he to me onct, sez he, "Hosee," sez he, "in litterytoor the only good thing is Natur. It's amazin' hard to come at," sez he, "but onet git it an' you've gut everythin'. Wut's the sweetest small on airth?" sez he. "Noomone hay," sez I, pooty bresk, for he wuz allus hankerin' round in hayin'. "Nawthin' of the kine," sez he. "My leetle Huldy's

breath," sez I ag'in. "You're a good lad," sez he, his eyes sort of ripplin' like, for he lost a babe onct nigh about her age, "you 're a good lad; but 't ain't thet nuther," sez he. "Ef you want to know," sez he, "open your winder of a mornin' et ary season, and you 'll larn thet the best of perfooms is jest fresh air, fresh air," sez he, emphysizin', "athout no mixtur. Thet's wut I call natur in writin', and it bathes my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever I git a whiff on 't," sez he. I offen think o' thet when I set down to write, but the winders air so ept to git stuck, an' breakin' a pane costs sunthin'.

Yourn for the last time,
Nut to be continooed,

HOSEA BIGLOW.

Cookin' tu long, nor be took up tu rare.

Ez I wuz say'n', I hain't no chance to speak

So's 't all the country dreads me onct a week,

But I've consid❜ble o' thet sort o' head Thet sets to home an' thinks wut might be said,

The sense thet grows an' werrits underneath,

Comin' belated like your wisdom-teeth, An' git so el'kent, sometimes, to my gardin Thet I don' vally public life a fardin'. Our Parson Wilbur (blessin's on his head !) 'mongst other stories of ole times he hed, Talked of a feller thet rehearsed his spreads

Beforehan' to his rows o' kebbige-heads, (Ef't warn't Demossenes, I guess 't wuz Sisro,)

Appealin' fust to thet an' then to this

Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense.
This year I made the follerin' observations
Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' pa-
tience,

An', no reporters bein' sent express
To work their abstrac's up into a mess
Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur'
Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constric-

tor,

I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'twixt nonsense o' my own an' some one's else's.

(N. B. Reporters gin'lly git a hint To make dull orjunces seem 'live in print, An', ez I hev t' report myself, I vum, I'll put th' applauses where they'd ough' to come !)

MY FELLER KEBBIGE-HEADS, who look so green,

I vow to gracious thet ef I could dreen The world of all its hearers but jest you, 't would leave 'bout all tha' is wuth talkin' to,

An' you, my venʼable ol' frien's, thet show Upon your crowns a sprinklin' o' March