bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suf fice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also. Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death. "Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty :- I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate nie from mankind as a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them? Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present continue miraculous (even if for a moment discerned as such). We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from Heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals."-H. W.] No. VII. A LETTER FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY MR. HOSEA BIGLOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE FROM MR. BIGLOW TO S. H. GAY, ESQ., EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ANTISLAVERY STANDARD. [CURIOSITY may be said to be the quality which pre-eminently distinguishes and segregates man from the lower animals. As we trace the scale of animated nature downward, we find this faculty (as it may truly be called) of the mind diminished in the savage, and quite extinet in the brute. The first object which civilized man proposes to himself I take to be the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his neighbors. Nihil humanum a me alienum puto; I am curious about even John Smith. The desire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, indeed, of the same magnet) is that of communicating the unintelligence we have carefully picked up. Men in general may be divided into the inquisitive and the communicative. To the first class belong Peeping Toms, eaves-droppers, navel-contemplating Brahmins, metaphysicians, travellers, Empedocleses, spies, the various societies for promoting Rhinothism, Columbuses, Yankees, discoverers, and men of science, who present themselves to the mind as so many marks of interrogation wandering up and down the world, or sitting in studies and laboratories. The second class I should again subdivide into four. In the first subdivision I would rank those who have an itch to tell us about themselves, -as keepers of diaries, insignificant persons generally, Montaignes, Horace Walpoles, autobiographers, poets. The second includes those who are anxious to im part information concerning other people, -as historians, barbers, and such. To the third belong those who labor to give us intelligence about nothing at all, as novelists, political orators, the large majority of authors, preachers, lecturers, and the like. In the fourth come those who are communicative from motives of public benevolence, as finders of mares'-nests and bringers of ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls without feathers embraces all these subdivisions in himself to a greater or less degree, for none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a chalk one, but straightway the whole barnyard shall know it by our cackle or our cluck. Omnibus hoc ritium est. There are different grades in all these classes. One will turn his telescope toward a back-yard, another toward Uranus; one will tell you that he dined with Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may be considered as belonging to the first grand division, inasmuch as they all seem equally desirous of discovering the mote in their neighbor's eye. I To one or another of these species every hu man being may safely be referred. I think it beyond a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human. conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which, sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no means of conveying back to this world the scraps of news they have picked up in that. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every question, the great law of give and take runs through all nature, and if we see a hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read in every face I meet a standing advertisement of information wanted in regard to A. B., or that the friends of C. D. can hear something to his disadvantage by application to such a one. It was to gratify the two great passions of asking and answering that epistolary corre spondence was first invented. Letters (for by It is a nose thet wunt be led. this usurped title epistles are now commonly An ef I've one pecooler feetur, real letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, to see collected for the benefit of the curious. So, to begin at the beginnin' Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, There are, besides, letters addressed to pos- I 'm an eclectic; ez to choosin' letters and round-robins also conform them- DEER SIR its gut to be the fashun now to rite letters to the candid 8s and i wus chose at a publick Meetin in Jaalam to du wut wus nessary fur that town. i writ to 271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. tha air called candid 8s but I don't see nothin candid about 'em. this here 1 wich I send wus thought satty's factory. I dunno as it's ushle to print Poscrips, but as all the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus best. times has gretly changed. Formaly to knock a man into a cocked hat wus to use him up, but now it ony gives hin a chance fur the cheef madgustracy. - H. B. DEAR SIR, You wish to know my I leave a side thet looks like losin', Ez preudunt statesmun say, who 've planned O' chances ez to ware they 'll stand. Ez fer the war, I go agin it, The best way wuz to fight it thru ; Sometimes upon a powder-cart. About thet darned Proviso matter So 'st no one could n't pick it out; Yes, Sir, I am agin a Bank. Ez to the answerin' o' questions, Fer the holl country, an' the ground I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, I don't appruve o' givin' pledges; Thet preudunt farmers don't turn Ez long 'z the people git their rattle, Ez to the slaves, there 's no confusion A sort of ahem : Do I own any? Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge. Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, I'm jest a candidate, in short; Thet 's fair an' square an' parpendicler, But, ef the Public cares a fig To hev me an' thin' in particler, Wy, I'm a kind o' peri-Wig. P. S. Ez we 're a sort o' privateerin', O' course, you know, it's sheer an' An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin' An' ez the North hez took to brustlin' At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, I'll tell ye wut 'll save all tusslin' An' give our side a harnsome boost, Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question I'm RIGHT, although to speak I'm lawth; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, [And now of epistles candidatial, which are of two kinds, namely, letters of acceptance, and letters definitive of position. Our republic, on the eve of an election, may sately enough be called a republic of letters. Epistolary composition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes one candidate after another, not seldom cutting short the thread of political life. It has come to such a pass, that a party dreads less the attacks of its opponents than a letter from its candidate. Litera scripta manet, auul it will go hard if something bad cannot be made of it. General Harrison, it is well understood, was surrounded, during his candidacy, with the cordon sanitaire of a vigilance committee. No prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautionsly deprived of writing materials. The soot was scraped carefully from the chimney-places; outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death for any goose (who came clad in feathers) to approach within a certain limited distance of North Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises were reduced to the condition of Plato's original man. By these precautions the General was saved. Parra componere mugnis, I remember, that, when party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon occasion of the choice of a new deacon, I, having my preferences, yet not caring too openly to express them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring about that result which I deemed most desirable. My stratagem was no other than the throwing a copy of the Complete Letter-Writer in the way of the candidate whom I wished to defeat. He caught the infection, and addressed a short note to his constituents, in which the opposite party detected so many and so grave improprieties (he had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady acceptmg a proposal of marriage), that he not only lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion of Sabellianism and I know not what (the widow Endive assured me that he was a Paralipomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced to leave the town. Thus it is that the letter killeth. The object which candidates propose to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong, For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Hammon, and else where, in only one of which can I so much as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, related to have written six thousand books on the single subject of grammar, a topic rendered only more tenebrific by the labors of his successors, and which seems still to possess an attraction for authors in proportion as they can make nothing of A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, in the course of my studies, I have noted two bundred and three several interpretations, each lethiferal to all the rest. Non nostrum est ten it. upon a two hundred and fourth, which I em tas componere lites, yet I have myself ventured bodied in a discourse preached on occasion of the demise of the late usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large measure, the minds of my people. It is true that my views on this important point were ardently controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the will follow? At present, there may be death in pot-hooks as well as pots, the loop of a letter may suffice for a bow-string, and all the dreadful heresies of Antislavery may lurk in a flourish. — H. W.] No. VIII. A SECOND LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ. then preceptor of our academy, and in other style so compressed that superfluous words particulars a very deserving and sensible may not be detected in it. A severe critic young man, though possessing a somewhat might curtail that famous brevity of Caesar's by limited knowledge of the Greek tongue. But two thirds, drawing his pen through the superhis heresy struck down no deep root, and, he erogatory veni and vidi. Perhaps, after all, having been lately removed by the hand of the surest footing of hope is to be found in the Providence, I had the satisfaction of reaffirm- rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and ing my cherished sentiments in a sermon less of qualification in candidates. Already preached upon the Lord's day immediately suc- have statesmanship, experience, and the posceeding his funeral. This might seem like tak- session (nay, the profession, even) of principles ing an unfair advantage, did I not add that he been rejected as superfluous, and may not the had made provision in his last will (being celi-patriot reasonably hope that the ability to write bate) for the publication of a posthumous tractate in support of his own dangerous opinions. I know of nothing in our modern times which approaches so nearly to the ancient oracle as the letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, among the Greeks, the eating of beans was strictly forbidden to all such as had it in mind to consult those expert amphibologists, and this same prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples is understood to imply an abstinence from politics, beans having been used as ballots. That other explication, quod videlicet sensus eo cibo obtundi existimaret, though supported pugnis et calcibus by many of the learned, and not wanting the counte- [IN the following epistle, we behold Mr. nance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger expe- Sawin returning, a miles emeritus, to the bosom rience of New England. On the whole, I think of his family. Quantum mutatus! The good it safer to apply here the rule of interpretation Father of us all had doubtless intrusted to the which now generally obtains in regard to an- keeping of this child of his certain faculties of tique cosmogonies, myths, fables, proverbial a constructive kind. He had put in him a expressions, and knotty points generally, which share of that vital force, the nicest economy is, to find a common-sense meaning, and then of every minute atom of which is necessary select whatever can be imagined the most oppo-to the perfect development of Humanity. He site thereto. In this way we arrive at the con- had given him a brain and heart, and so had clusion, that the Greeks objected to the ques- equipped his soul with the two strong wings of tioning of candidates. And very properly, if, knowledge and love, whereby it can mount to as 1 conceive, the chief point be not to dis- hang its nest under the eaves of heaven. cover what a person in that position is, or what this child, so dowered, he had intrusted to the he will do, but whether he can be elected. Vos keeping of his vicar, the State. How stands exemplaria Græca nocturna versate manu, versate the account of that stewardship? The State, diurna. or Society (call her by what name you will), But, since an imitation of the Greeks in had taken no manner of thought of him till she this particular (the asking of questions being saw him swept out into the street, the pitiful one chief privilege of freemen) is hardly to be leavings of last night's debauch, with cigarhoped for, and our candidates will answer, ends, lemon-parings, tobacco-quids, slops, vile whether they are questioned or not, I would stenches, and the whole loathsome next-mornrecommend that these ante-electionary dia- ing of the bar-room, an own child of the logues should be carried on by symbols, as Almighty God! I remember him as he was were the diplomatic correspondences of the brought to be christened, a ruddy, rugged Scythians and Macrobii, or confined to the lan- babe; and now there he wallows, reeking, guage of signs, like the famous interview of seething,- -the dead corpse, not of a man, but Panurge and Goatsnose. A candidate might of a soul, putrefying lump, horrible for the then convey a suitable reply to all committees life that is in it. Comes the wind of heaven, of inquiry by closing one eye, or by presenting that good Samaritan, and parts the hair upon them with a phial of Egyptian darkness to be his forehead, nor is too nice to kiss those speculated upon by their respective constituen- parched, cracked lips; the morning opens upon cies. These answers would be susceptible of him her eyes full of pitying sunshine, the sky whatever retrospective construction the exi- yearns down to him, and there he lies fergencies of the political campaign might seem menting. O sleep! let me not profane thy holy to demand, and the candidate could take his name by calling that stertorous unconsciousposition on either side of the fence with entire ness a slumber! By and by comes along the consistency. Or, if letters must be written, State, God's vicar. Does she say, My poor, profitable use might be made of the Dighton forlorn foster-child! Behold here a force rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, which I will make dig and plant and build for every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to me"? Not so, but, "Here is a recruit readyeduce a different meaning, whereby a sculp-made to my hand, a piece of destroying energy tured stone or two supplies us, and will probably continue to supply posterity, with a very vast and various body of authentic history. For even the briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dangerous. There is scarce any -a And lying unprofitably idle." So she claps an ugly gray suit on him, puts a musket in his grasp, and sends him off, with Gubernatorial and other godspeeds, to do duty as a destroyer. I made one of the crowd at the last Mechan ics' Fair, and, with the rest, stood gazing in | I've lost one eye, but thet 's a loss it's wonder at a perfect machine, with its soul of Are, its boiler-heart that sent the hot blood pulsing along the iron arteries, and its thews of steel. And while I was admiring the adaptation of means to end, the harmonious involu tions of contrivance, and the never-bewildered complexity, I saw a grimed and greasy fellow, the imperious engine's lackey and drudge, whose sole office was to let fall, at intervals, a drop or two of oil upon a certain joint. Then my soul said within me. See there a piece of mechanism to which that other you marvel at is but as the rude first effort of a child, -a force which not merely suffices to set a few wheels in motion, but which can send an im pulse all through the infinite future, a contrivance, not for turning out pins, or stitching buttonholes, but for making Hamlets and Lears. And yet this thing of iron shall be housed, waited on, guarded from rust and dust, and it shall be a crime but so much as to scratch it with a pin: while the other, with its fire of God in it, shall be buffeted hither and thither, and finally sent carefully a thousand miles to be the target for a Mexican cannonball. Unthrifty Mother State! My heart burned within me for pity and indignation, and I renewed this covenant with my own soul, In aliis mansuetus ero, at, in blasphemiis contra Christum, non ita.-H. W.] I SPOSE you wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the soul o' me, Exacly ware I be myself, meanin' by thet the holl o' me. Wen I left hum, I hed two legs, an' they worn't bad ones neither, (The scaliest trick they ever played wuz bringin' on me hither,) Now one on 'em 's I dunno ware; they thought I wuz adyin', An' sawed it off because they said 't wuz kin' o' mortifyin'; I'm willin' to believe it wuz, an' yit I easy to supply Out of the glory that I've gut, fer thet is all my eye; An' one is big enough, I guess, by diligently usin' it, To see all I shall ever git by way o' pay fer losin' it; Officers I notice, who git paid fer all our thumps an' kickins, Du So, An' wal by keepin' single eyes arter the fattest pickins; ez the eye 's put fairly out, I'll larn to go without it, not allow myself to be no gret put out about it. Now, le' me see, thet is n't all; I used, 'fore leavin' Jaalam, To count things on my finger-eends, but sutthin' seems to ail 'em : Ware's my left hand? O, darn it, yes, I recollect wut's come on 't; I haint no left arm but my right, an' thet 's gut jest a thumb on 't; It aint so hendy ez it wuz to cal'late a sum on 't. I've hed some ribs broke,-six (I bl'ieve), I haint kep' no account on 'em ; Wen pensions git to be the talk, I'll settle the amount on 'em. An' now I'm speakin' about ribs, it kin' o' brings to mind One thet I could n't never break, the one I lef' behind; Ef you should see her, jest clear out the spout o' your invention An' pour the longest sweetnin' in about an annooal pension, An' kin' o' hint (in case, you know, the critter should refuse to be Consoled) I aint so 'xpensive now to keep ez wut I used to be; There's one arm less, ditto one eye, an' then the leg thet 's wooden Can be took off an' sot away wenever ther's a puddin'. I spose you think I'm comin' back ez opperlunt ez thunder, With shiploads o' gold images an' varus sorts o' plunder; Wal, 'fore I vullinteered, I thought this country wuz a sort o' Canaan, a reg'lar Promised Land flowin' with rum an' water, Ware propaty growed up like time, without no cultivation, |