permit him to say, with Southey, “think not that I offer any apology for my levities to your gravityships! they need it not and you deserve it not." The door no sooner closes than some one exclaims, "Sydney Smith, who ought to know, says that the tendency of Wit and Humor is to corrupt the heart!" I reply-you who have read his life ought to know that his daily actions contradicted those words a thousand times. And, if you wish for authority, Carlyle says "The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.* Nay, we may say that unless seasoned and purified by humor, sensibility is apt to run wild; will readily corrupt into disease, falsehood, or, in one word, sentimentality." Humor is the salt which gives savor to all our intellectual and emotional food. It adds a relish to trifles and keeps greater things from decay. It preserves many delicacies too for the mind's palate, and is indispensable to healthy, generous, life. There is salt even in our tears, and no reader of Hamlet can say that Humor is inconsistent with true pathos-though it is with shams of all sorts-thanks to its truthful descent; and by the way, there is no thorough lover of the great Shakspeare who will not encourage its highest cultivation in all forms. Let us now examine our own position with respect to this subject. That the American character possesses and appreciates all kinds of wit and humor, no one can deny. From the Gallic lack of broad fun, the German phlegm and the conceited English obfuscation, it is comparatively free. The Frenchman who saw nothing amusing in the story of the man whose neck was so crooked that he was obliged to put on his cravat with a corkscrew; the Dutch captain who expressed by "ein hoondert and odd" his voyage of one hundred and ninety-nine days; and the sons of Britain who won't enjoy Mr. Hawthorne's last book, have few representatives among the Yankees. Versatile in all the arts of life, the American bears that quality strongly marked in his keen sense of humor. The inimitable sparkle of Thackeray's diamond wit, the genial pages of Dickens, the charms of Washington Irving, enlighten the same mind that often enjoys a laugh with those curious benefactors of digestion, John Phoenix, Artemus Wárd, and Orpheus C. Kerr. But although this is true, is it not also a fact that * Frankness compels my quoting a remark of Hazlitt which, if true, is a sad exception to the above: "One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with which we cannot sympathize from its absurdity or insignificance. Women laugh at their lovers." Can this be so? the sense of humor is not sufficiently cultivated among us, and the education which it does receive is rather incidental than the result of serious purpose? Those to whom nature has been bountiful in this invaluable gift, following easily their bent, develop by means of recreation, a power, the use of which they learn to prize after it has grown to be such almost unconsciously, But for the unfortunates who are not so ready-I do not refer to that lugubrious class of "evangelicals" who place their hands on the pit of the stomach and, rolling the eyes, murmur the word "piety" whenever a joke is made, nor to such matter-of-fact men as he who, when a chemical friend remarked that it was easy enough to put oxygen into a bladder, but would be hard to put the bladder into an ox-again, replied, "That is perfectly evident"-those are incorrigible, we can hardly expect them to become very agreeable angels; but for those I mean who, like the old muskets, are apt to hang fire with the very best priming unless you give them a judicious poke in the side, what advantages are there? None, but the uncomfortable disciplinary mortification resulting from explosions too long delayed. Now such men need positive instruction. Slow to take advantage of humorous books, they need the attrition of others to wear a way to their latent sensibility. 66 What," say you, "must we then eliminate our jokes by explanation, that dullards may take pleasure in the process?" Not all of them, my dear sir, God forbid-for how should the rest of us live without the dyspepsia? And besides it would not answer for a wit to proclaim, "Ho, you who laugh out of time, and you who chuckle at the wrong point-come hither and hear my comments upon jokes!" He who laughs late takes the proper time for himself; he who magnifies the wrong point sees no other to be enjoyed. "Certainly," replies my impatient friend, "and is it worth while to waste our fire in drying such wet blankets, when there is so much material to kindle and increase the flame?" You misunderstand me; I do not propose to approach the thick-skulled directly and alone, more than I do to leave to the witty the sole enjoyment of wit. Nor is the task of cultivation a hopeless one. The well-strung instrument is harmonious from the first, but its tone and arrangement require use to improve. Let the chords of one loosely strung be swept continually, and though they promise far less than the first, their owner recognizes a power there and cannot but seek the higher pleasure to be gained by tightening the strings. Thus, as in every department of education, the same earth from which Pegasus starts and, spurning, seeks a higher sphere, serves for steaaier hacks to jog, and it may be, prance upon. To be more definite, should not our press, our lecturers, and all who influence the public mind, besides giving us their own examples of wit and humor, set forth conspicuously the advantages of their cultivation, extol their possession as a valuable power, and philosophize more than they do (and more than many of them can,) upon their nature and uses. Do not smile and ask, "Shall we not have also professorships of that branch ?" but acknowledge what you must believe, that, if in our colleges the taste of our young men was stimulated and guided properly with reference to this "branch," our lawyers would be less dry, our doctors less narrow, and our preachers-how much less prosy. Without suggesting "Joe Miller" as a text-book, or wishing to be amused from the pulpit, I maintain that the tone which would be imparted by such a course would be most refreshing and beneficial. C. E. G. Our Flag. See those Stripes in glory streaming, As they strive to kiss the sky! 'Tis Columbia's gorgeous ensign, Fringed with heaven's own lovely light, Float, thou star-emblazoned banner! Float, thou proud, triumphant standard! Deck thee with another trophy, Dye thy Stripes a deeper red. Float, thou Freedom's sacred emblem! Up the rugged steeps of Time: Mark the shadow of God's hand. Float, thou Flag! aye, all unsullied W. W. B. A Month at Barre's Landing. We lay at Barré's Landing, in the state of Louisiana. Nine miles east of Opelousas, on the road leading across the country to Port Hudson, there is a bridge which spans the Bayou Courtableau. By that bridge is a landing-place, by that landing-place a store-house, and around that store-house are sprinkled a dozen houses which, collectively, are known as Barré's Landing. Who Barré was, nobody knows. It was in May, 1863. General Banks, with his little army, by a series of swift and brilliant manœuvres, had completely outgeneraled ⚫ the rebel General Richard Taylor, a nephew of "old Zach.," defeating him in several engagements near Franklin. By a hot pursuit of eighty miles or more, he had completed the annihilation of his army, twentythousand strong, and had sent its panic-stricken fragments headlong on the road to Texas. Around Opelousas he gave his exhausted regiments time to rest and brace themselves for the long and arduous campaign which his far-seeing mind had already planned for them. The army rested in serene contemplation of that which they had so gloriously accomplished, in calm expectation of the yet more glorious future. We reached Opelousas on the 20th of April; on the 26th, a magnificent Sunday, we took a leisurely walk over to the Landing and settled down on the banks of the Courtableau, near the point where the Têche takes its rise. Who shall tell of the twenty-five days that followed? For novelty, picturesqueness and excitement they form an era in our lives to which, in its way, we have never known an equal. One by one, regiments and parts of regiments arrived, until finally the whole division was assembled. Then, at the word from its commander, the army swept North again, leaving us alone in charge of the post. The Bayou is deep and would be perhaps one hundred feet broad, but for the picket lines of trees which grow in the water and devote themselves to the especial business of harrassing unhappy steamboatmen, succeeding so well that at night they have to tie up by the bank in despair. For all that, steamers came threading their way up from Brashear City, bringing army supplies of every variety; they went back heavily loaded with cotton, sugar and animals,-the tops of the columns, whether of bales or hogsheads, having capitals of ivory set in ebony, of negroes, forsooth, exulting in their freedom. The loading and unloading of these steamers was our especial business. Of cotton, fully ten thousand bales passed through our hands; of negroes, perhaps as many individuals; of anything else it would be impossible to estimate either the number or the quantity. We soon became quite comfortable. It is marvelous with what facility soldiers figure out comfort as a quotient from the most problematical data. We got boards here and there, and made shanties. We brought branches from the woods and made arbors in which mockingbirds sometimes sang all the morning, now and then trying to imitate the fife and drum, and flying off in disgust at their failure. We laid out company streets and swept the parade-ground with scrupulous care. We laid floors for our little shelter-tents, thinking, half guiltily, what luxurious rascals we were, to be sure, to have nice boards to sleep on, when so many of our fellow-soldiers were sleeping in the mud. Where the practice of finding things failed, resort was had to confiscation. Comfort was the main object, and it was not convenient to be overscrupulous as to the means. Chum and I set up our little bits of shelter-tent together. When it rained o' nights from the South, he got the soaking. When it rained from the North, I got it. When it rained straight down, we both got a soaking and hung ourselves out to dry in the morning. If it rained particularly hard, we used to climb into a carryall which the Chaplain had picked up, and sit on his feet until he woke and kicked |