''Didn't you?' said I.

"Me! Naw!' and down it came, and sweep it went into the stove. The irate Union House corps went out, the fire had already done so, and I rescued the placard. Presently its meaning dawned upon me, and I grew rapidly sea-sick. I was busy after that till the train came, at three-forty-five. My 'chep rates' was intended for 'ded rats;' my ('soten ete,') something neat, was ('saten ete,') satinet. So the Dutchman read it!

! All writings should have a moral.

'MORAL: Encourage the schoolmaster.'

THERE is grit in the subjoined poem, by our ever-welcome HATTIE; and KNICK Opines that there are not many who will not give it a second perusal :

THANK GOD! the bloody fire of war
Is sweeping o'er our land,

The fire whose wild resistless flame,
GOD lighted with His brand:

And which can nevermore be quenched,

Till He holds forth His hand.

Thank GOD for war! for flame and sword,
In token that He reigns.

Burn on, O devastating fire!

We watch with joy thy gains;

For we can see thy mad white heat
Is melting off the chains.

And we can hear, O jubilee !

The falling of the chains;

Oh! sweetest sound to spirits free,

The falling of the chains.

'The whole world has a gala day,
Hosannas wild are riven

From all true hearts, and angels hold
High carnival in heaven.

And glory high to Freedom's GOD,

On earth and heaven is given,

For lo! the Malakoff of wrong

Is being stormed, and we

Are looking on, knowing the while
Ours is the victory:

For heaven and GOD are always on

The side of Liberty.

And sweet unto the ears of Heaven,

Are shoutings of the Free,

When they go forth to break all bonds,

And set the captive free.

Thank God for war! for its mad sweep

Its tide of blood and fire;

Wild raging round the Ship of State,
Like flaming funeral pyre;

For when the Ship is purified,
Then will the flames expire.

It only burns up Wrong and Crime,

The Right 't will ne'er destroy;

And slave-hearts at its coming peal

Out carillons of joy.

And praises of its pitying flames,
All his glad thoughts employ;
And the wilder burn its bloody flames
The greater is his joy.

'Columbus, Wisconsin.'

'Thank GOD for war! although the tears
It brings would almost quench

Its maddening flames; and though it doth
The land with tortures wrench,

Like those of hell, yet still our souls
Can cheer it on nor blench.
For all this woe we need to purge
Us from the eternal stains,
Which on us rest for having nursed
The Infinite Wrong of Chains,

And suckling at our country's breasts,
The forgers of the chains.

And so all loyal hearts and true,
Wherever freedom reigns,

Cry, hail! all hail! most glorious war,
The War of Breaking Chains.

Hurrah for the West! Wisconsin included by all means.

No wonder that its men fight bravely, when its young ladies pen war-songs like this. The great, free, noble West! How they fought at Donelson! how the news ran like lightning over the world! and how every friend of freedom cried as he heard it, 'Hurrah for the West!' We love the very name of the West — we always did. There is a noble land, grand, broad-spreading, the home of heroes and of great thoughts; the foe of all that is mean, petty, and provincial. Reader, did it ever occur to you what a young infinity of a father-land that man owns, who can call himself a born son of the West? Talk of 'sacred soil;' the sacredest of soil is the broadest, for it makes man cosmopolite and world-wide in his affinities to humanity.

'RUTH HALL,' our Chicago friend, will accept thanks for an unpretending but most touching and as we think beautiful little sketch. Consider it gently,

dear reader:

'IF you fail to find pathos in the following incident narrated to me by the little PEGGY when grown to womanhood, and suffering the pangs called home-sickness, the fault must lie in my mode of telling it.

"The pain-wearied mother of six small children the oldest ten, the youngest barely a year old — lay on the lowly pallet where she had counted the long, long hours in suffering since the birth of her last pet, BARNEY. The cabin was surrounded by a lonely moor, and there were no near neighbors; 'so the hard-working father, forced to toil that they might eat, had shared the night-watches necessary only within the last two weeks with his little daughter, who drudged incessantly each day, also feeding and tending the other children, still too young to share her labors. On this particular night a fearful storm moaned and wept round the hut, and the rain lashed the thatched roof and one window with terrific violence. It was PEGGY's turn to watch, and she sat by the remains of the peat-fire frightened and very sorrowful, when her mother, with the sweet, low voice she loved so well, called her to her side.

"I am going at last, darlint,' said she as she kissed the poor little tear-drenched face bent down to hers, and ye must mind the father and be good to the childer'— for an instant the deep gray eyes were raised heavenward- 'and be sure tache my bowld blue-eyed babby to say his prayers. I shall never see him again here; I must meet him in heaven. See that he gets there, PEGGY; he's your boy now.'

"O mother! mother! let me call father and the rest, that ye may kiss 'em once

again.'

"Whist, acushla, I am tired; sure I could not bide their tears, they'd scald my heart and hinder me from heaven. Time enough for them to raise the keen when I am gone; let me die in peace;' and the slender fingers, laid in blessing on the young head, slipped slowly down, then faintly felt for the little brown hands employed in crushing back the tears, so with a yearning look of love in her soft eyes, turned toward the child she could no longer see, and with a deep sigh, she left her motherless.'

'Motherless.' O Death! thou bringest many a sorrow; but we might forget and forgive all, were it not for that one word, 'Motherless.' Other wounds are healed, other troubles forgotten; over the harshest rifts of the soul Time casts a mellow, softening shade; but long years bring no forgetfulness of the great grief 'when Mother died.' Never shall we forget a scene once witnessed years ago. A poor, sick, wretched woman lay in the street in a fit, while several kind-hearted by-standers were doing what they could to aid her. She was herself advanced in life, but amid her convulsive, unconscious spasms, she moaned out: O mother! mother!' Was it that the care she was receiving recalled some motherly caress of youth? We know not; but we shall never forget that distressed appealing cry: 'O mother! mother!' Young reader, if you have yet a mother, be all that you can to her; grieve her in nothing, for a day will come when you would give the best joy of your life and the treasure dearest to your heart to recal one unkind word to 'Mother.' WHITEWASH is a wonderful institution, and the Rev. JAMES WILLIAMS, who had witnessed its beneficent results in the South-Sea Islands, thus describes the way in which it 'took' among the natives:

'AFTER having laughed at the process of burning, which they believed to be to cook the coral for their food, what was their astonishment, when in the morning they found his cottage glittering in the rising sun, white as snow! They danced, they sung, they shouted and screamed with joy. The whole island was in a commotion, given up to wonder and curiosity, and the laughable scenes which ensued after they got possession of the brush and tub, baffle description. The high-bred immediately voted it a cosmetic and kalydor, and superlatively happy did many a swarthy coquette consider herself, could she but enhance her charms by a daub of the white brush. And now party spirit ran high, as it will do in more civilized countries, as to who was or who was not best entitled to preference. One party urged their superior rank; one had the brush, and was determined at all events to keep it; and a third tried to overturn the whole, that they might obtain some of the sweepings. They did not even scruple to rob each other of the little share that some had been so happy as to secure. But soon new lime was prepared, and in a week not a hut, a domestic utensil, a war-club, or a garment but what was as white as snow; not an inhabitant but had a skin painted with the most grotesque figures; not a pig but what was similarly whitened, and even mothers might be seen in every direction capering with extravagant gestures, and yelling with delight at the superior beauty of their white-washed infants.'

What a paradise would that be for the colored gentry, who were once scolded for lavish and fashionable habits by the Rev. J. CESAR HAMIBAL in these words: 'How d'ye spect to git along ef you lib in dis stravagant way? Gwine to de Sembly balls at twenty-fibe cents a ticket ebery week, when de carpetbeatin' season's gone out an' de wite-washin' season's not come in.' How would they rejoice in that South-Sea land where the 'wite-washin season' kept in all the year round? KNICK is indebted to an ever merry and most welcome contributor for the following brace of witty and wicked anecdotes coaxed from a Wisconsin-ful friend:

-

'My story relates to a good old minister down in New Hampshire - who has long since gone to his rest- - who was once very much troubled by wild and untamable students, but who will be troubled by them no more forever, having gone, I suppose, where wild and untamable students never go. He was in the middle of a sermon one day in his study, when he was called out, and left the manuscript on the desk. One of the said students, probably seeking good food for meditation, proceeded to look it over. He found the parson had left the last sentence standing in this way: 'The wicked shall flourish like a green bay Now the youth, incited no doubt by a desire to assist the poor over-labored parson, thought he would help him along a little in his labors, and taking up the pen, finished the sentence for him. But, whether from an ignorance of Scripture or from a natural ebullition of total depravity, deponent saith not—not exactly as the parson would have done. Unfortunately, the poor minister did not have time to read the sermon over before preaching it, (do such things ever happen now-adays?) and so the next Sabbath the congregation were edified in the most eloquent part of the discourse by the following startling announcement: 'My hearers,' said he, 'the righteous are always very much afflicted in this world, while the wicked flourish like a green bay horse.' He looked down at his manuscript, up at the people, then down again, and finally faltered out in his dismay: 'Horse! HORSE! Yes, my brethren, I swear it is horse,' and proceeded to seventhly.

'What will be the future punishment of that atrocious student, O KNICK? Will not his soul be doomed to ride through the regions of shade, throughout eternity, on a green bay horse-spavined at that?

'But did you ever hear the story of the ignorant old fellow in Massachusetts, who, years ago, happened (as such things sometimes happen even now) to be elected to the State Assembly one year, and who came home, as newly-fledged legislators are apt to do, full of legal lore and erudition? His neighbors had a world of fun at his expense in asking questions and getting him to give them information. There was great talk of the Direct Tax in those days, and one of his friends one day remarked to him: 'Well, neighbor JONES, 'there's a terrible sight of talk now-a-days about this direct tax, and I don't know exactly what it means. Can you tell me what this tax is for?'

'Why, certainly, neighbor SMITH. The matter was all discussed up at Bosting. I made a speech on it myself. The direct tax goes to support knavery and put down resurrection.'

'Although it was supposed in those days that he meant support the navy and put down insurrection, yet I think the answer in these times would be true just as it stands. What does KNICK think?'

KNICK 'dinks Shoost as you dink.' Verily, there has been no little change of Navy matters of late into those which smack of knavery, as sundry developments of divers purchases of vessels do seem to indicate. WE give the following without comment, beyond the author's own:

THE reader (1) who ventures on these chapters, to use the words of Montaigne, will, in all probability, if I may quote SENECA, repent of the venture, as SCALIGER says, ere he gets half-way through. They are written not for that man, or any other man,' but for another man.

My first is a Moral Tale, and is called 'SASS REBUKED.'

་

Some years ago, in the summer-time, (2) several ladies were seated under a tree discussing beaux.

'I like BROWN well enough,' quoth young Miss FLIP; 'but la ! he 's so slow. He drawls. I always feel when talking to him like saying: 'G'lang! chic-ch'k !'

As the laughter went out, BROWN himself came in. BROWN was a Philadelphia punster (3) of great renown.

FLIP was under a full head of Sass, and resolved to go ahead. Sidling up to BROWN, she said sotto voce.

'I have just said something of you, Mister BROWN; I was afraid it would get round in a perverted shape, so I just resolved to tell it to you myself. I said you speak so slowly - you know I admire deliberate speech — that when you talk I always felt like saying chic, ch'k, ch'k!'

--

'A—w, Miss FLI-P,' replied BROWN in his wounded-snakiest Alexandrine drawl; 'no won-der you find me slo-ow. You should remem-ber what up-hi-ll work it al-ways is to talk to yoo-ou.'

CHAPTER II.

'EST autem inquisitio de conditionibus adventitiis Entium (Anglicé, ducks; Teutonicé, Enten; Francicé, canards,) quos transcendentes dicere possumus.'-BACON, De Aug. Scientiarum lib. III.

THIS chapter speaketh of a lady and a manuscript she left with an editor for acceptance, and a gay lot it was. To be sure, there was nothing immoral in it. The Aunt might have permitted her niece to read it.

Only the niece would have resigned on the first sentence, if I know any thing about nieces.

But that it was not immoral, was about its only merit- rather a .poor one as the world goes.

[For I am very sorry to say it; but there was a few years ago in the city of small French library, kept by a milliner, and patronized only by ladies.

a

'CASANOVA, Madame ?'

'Ah! Monsieur, there is no use of asking for CASANOVA. The ladies keep it out forevare and evare. It is engaged for months and months in advance.'

Her customers were all of the élite-rary.]

To proceed.

The MS. was ungrammatical.

Inelegant.

Badly plotted.

Worse spelled.

Unpunctual.

And otherwise ill-timed.

'It was,' said the Editor, 'in short, so confoundedly bad in all respects, that I thought there could be no true mercy in letting it down easily. I told her plainly and politely what were the matters with it.

'She looked up with a gay, arch smile.

'Why, bless me, Sir! of course it has all these errors. I see how it is. You think that I pretend to be literary, and take some pride in writing well. Not at all, Sir; I write only for money; and so long as I can get a good, high price for my articles, I don't care what defects they may have. Ha! ha! ha!'

'And she laughed merrily at my simplicity. And I laughed, and we both loffe. [CHAUCER.]

'You sees,' said the blacksmith, 'the advantage we has in speaking English. I axed Dutch HANS yisterday wat he called 'water?' 'Wasser,' says he. Now there 's where