"and so that your wife has money, what will you consent she shall be without? Money you are to have, that's settled. Will you give up beauty?" "Yes." "Sense?" "Yes." "Good temper ?" "Yes." "Your own way?" Qh! I'll manage to get that." 66 that you have already made one of those exchanges for which men come to me. You have exchanged health for success; and now you want both health and success; but it seems you can't have both. Give up at least a portion of the last. Work half your time, and get back half your health and lightness of heart." "How is that possible? If I refuse any business I shall probably lose it all." "Nay; there is a limit to business somewhere. Nobody can work more than three No; it is in the bargain that you shall not hundred and sixty-five days, of twenty-four have it; will you give it up ?" "Well, yes; but I'll try." "You are to fail. What do you say?" "I'll give all up for money." "Well, you deserve a very rich bride. your wish then." Have hours each, during the year; therefore you can, if you will, cut off even the half." "Not so easily; I must work in proportion to other people; some of whom can bear employment for eighteen hours a day." come into your destiny.” "If so, they are able to do it by being origAnother applicant desired that her daugh-inally endowed with health such as does not ter should marry; and Mr. Destiny thought the wish deserved accomplishment at the price of the daughter's society, her utility at home, the pleasure and grace she had given to her native place, the seven-eighths of her heart bestowed on her husband, while the parents kept only one-eighth. "But it would be hard to fall behind those whom I have surpassed. Nobody can work more hours than there are in the year; but for success they must work in proportion to other people." "Harder, I should think, to bear the restless anguish which is in your face." "That's bad enough, indeed." "Besides the probability of being unable to do no work whatever." "That's much worse." Again one came, and said a legacy had been left him, and he wished it was more. Mr. Destiny laughed, and said he regretted he could do nothing for him. Another, who was an old man, certainly midway between seventy and eighty, wished he had a knowledge of entomology; and Mr. Destiny, praising his energy, proposed to him to give away one of his remaining years in exchange for the knowledge. In like manner a young man who wished he understood German, was told to give for it three hours out of the four-and-twenty for half a year. "You will still have twenty-one hours," said Mr. Des-row I will let you know." tiny. "Take my advice: give half your success for half your time; and give that time for your wish-Health." "Sir, I must think about it." "Don't think too long, for fear the opportunity should pass." "Well, I dare say you're right; and to-mor I returned home, and next morning when I woke in my bed I found I was in the shivers of a nervous fever. Ideas raced through my brain with a rapidity which defied my efforts to catch them; I talked, but I knew not what I said; sometimes I cried, sometimes I laughed, and I And now, as the interest in others began to slacken, I bethought me that it would be as well if I went up and expressed my own wishes; and accordingly I approached the counter and told Mr. Destiny that I wished for health. "Indeed," said he, "you look as if you need-remember but little till complete exhaustion ed that possession. What ails a young fellow seemed to sink me into a profound sleep, from like you to be so sick?" which I woke, and heard some one say, will live." "Hard work, I think," said I. "I am obliged to be in my chambers at the call of my clients, the attorneys, ten hours a day, and to work five hours more to get through the business they give me." "In short, you are a successful lawyer?" "Very much so; but a miserable invalid." "Had you ever health and spirits ?" "Yes, I had. In my university days I was so very happy and so very glad that my companions named me Festive." "He And live I did. I was frightened at what had happened, and I took measures to exchange my wealth for health. I steadily refused to plead for Jennings versus the Plausible Insurance Office; and I bought a horse, which I kept last winter at Dunchurch, and hunted from London twice a week. I soon got better; and what is remarkable, though I went several times in search of New Street, beyond the Tower, and Mr. Destiny's Wishes Shop, I never could find "Then, my dear Sir, let me observe to you either. VOL. XXXII.-No. 188.-R A SPECIAL MEETING of the Sassafras Club was held on one of the softest mid-November days, on the sunny piazza of the Member for Woods and Fields, to consider the great question of the Indian Summer. The month of October had been chilly and frosty, and November was already advanced, so that the expectations of the lovely season were apparently to be baffled. There had been none of the haze that so tenderly envelops the horizon and the woods-none of that warm, spellbound stillness, full of "the moist, rich smell of the rotting leaves," which is the last exquisite breath of summer. Indeed the order of Nature seemed to be generally disturbed. Even Thanksgiving was displaced. It was pushed out of November into December. The turkeys gobbled a little more cheerily as they heard the Presidential proclamation, which gave them a respite from the Governor's annual edict. The shades of the Pilgrims, if any body could have seen them, would doubtless have frowned at the ruthless trifling with an ancient landmark. And if a State could not have its own way, not only in appointing Thanksgiving but in giving the law to the country as to the very day, what were State rights worth? In so grave an emergency, when the bulwarks of things seemed to be threatened, and both the Indian Summer and Thanksgiving to be in peril, the situation was like that in which the kings of France found themselves compelled to summon the Estates-and the Sassafras Club necessarily assembled. Two new members appeared and took their seats without challenge. One of them, indeed, the Amber Goddess, immediately moved the previous question, and announced a startling theory. It was useless, said the Goddess, to deny that the Indian Summer had kept faith, even if-for some reason unknown, but unquestionably sufficient-it had been delayed. Probably, if we might venture to surmise upon topics so celestial, it had been a fine sense of fitness in the rare and pensive season. It had wished to observe the due relation of time between itself and Thanksgiving; and as the Higher Powers had deferred the feast of Pumpkins until early December, it was only becoming that the Indian Summer should delay to spread its veil until the middle of November. The speculation was so subtle and probable that the entire Sassafras murmured an odorous assent. After meditating for a little time, hearing the nuts drop and watching the leaves float and fall beyond the shanty, and the round yellow sun in the haze, plainly prefiguring the approaching day sacred to the golden pumpkin, a Member asked whether any hazy friend present could propound any tolerable theory of the genial warmth of the season? Fortunately the Sassafras differs from all other clubs and societies in the world in this remarkable point, that every member has a theory of every thing. This is due, doubtless, to the fact that it is not composed of practical people. If it were, it would indulge in no theories. Practical people avoid theories. Practical people, who have money to invest, never cherish a theory that an enormous Great Eastern steamship is the very thing and so such a ship is never built, and practical people lose no money by her. So, also, practical people like engineers, and legislatures, and railroad companies scorn all theories of tunneling mountains so that there is never a Hoosac tunnel to consume several millions of dollars. Practical people in Wall Street and similar haunts never have any theories of finance-so they never lose fortunes. And, above all, the practical men who sneer at the El Dorado of the poets are never deceived by the Colorado of their friends the other practical men- so that they never drop any hundreds of thousands of dollars down imaginary gold and silver mines. Practical people have no theories. They leave such follies to Sassafras people. Indeed there are excellent subscribers to the proposed Pomegranate Gardens at Terra del Fuego who ask, with sympathy, whether the Sassafras Club is not a kind of highly respectable private Lunatic Asylum. But There was not the same murmur of assent. after a little while, the Member for Woods and Waters who, with his hat slouched over his eyes, had been walking up and down the piazza with a cane, eating a delicious apple, a gilliflower, which made the most aromatic pear in the house tremble for its laurels, said that the time seemed to him to have arrived when it was necessary to settle a very momentous point of the main subject; and that was the origin of the name Indian Summer. "Why," said the friend of Cowper, as he shut up the pocketknife with which he had been slicing the fruit and sharing it with the club, "Why is it called Indian Summer?" Then he pulled his hat a little more closely over his eyes, as if he distinctly saw the reason in the lining. A very timid member, in a husky voice which he vainly endeavored to clear, and who was reassured upon being told not to be disturbed since it was only the haze in his throat, then said that, when he was a very small boy, he had heard the great Mr. Webster suggest that the name was probably given to the season by the early settlers, who supposed the smokiness of the air to proceed from the first fires of the Indians. At this the friend of Cowper only pulled his hat further down, until he seemed to be going up into it. Nobody spoke for a long time. But at length the Amber Goddess, smiling, moved that the carver of the gilliflower should come down out of his hat and express the sense of the club upon the subject. The genial apple-eater smiled in return, and said that his theory was very simple, and in the absence of any practical people he would frankly state it. When the first settlers, he said, were overtaken by the early autumn, they saw the leaves falling, they saw and felt the October frosts and the growing chill, and they took the hint and prepared for winter. But the Indians said to them, imperfectly: "No, no; more summer yet," knowing that the warm weather was to come. And when it did come, the settlers naturally said: "Why, this is the Indian Summer; the more summer yet of which the Indians told us." He took off his hat, and the entire club removed theirs in hearty and admiring salutation. The outposts of knowledge had been advanced. It was impossible to resist so plausible a theory. A huge basket of lovely gilliflowers was brought in. The club instantly proceeded to elect a President, and every member, according to the ancient custom of the club, cast his apple-seed for the friend of Cowper, who will now be recognized and honored by the immemorial title of the club President, Flower of the Sassafras, until a better theory is propounded. WE were lately meditating upon the unique and beautiful building which the artists of the National Academy have erected in New York for the exhibition of pictures and for the convenience of art schools, and reflecting with joy that the genial fraternity had established themselves as a recognized power in the chief city of the country, when we read with astonishment, in a letter to the National Intelligencer, at Washington, these words: "The productions of American artists are now come to be one of the great features of attraction in New York, and the wonderful improvements made in every branch of their profession, especially landscape painting, is fully understood, and would be appreciated and encouraged by the people much more than it is if the artists themselves would show a proper disposition to gratify the public's wishes." good friend asked the question than he rises to the answer. Like an organist who pulls out all the stops, crowds fresh hands to the bellows, and smites the resounding keys with Briarean hands, this is his statement of what the Public needs: "What New York merits, and what she will eventually have for she must keep step to the march of progress— is a museum of arts and sciences that shall surpass in capacity as well as design either the Louvre or Jardins des Plantes of Paris, or the British Museum. There ought to be two main buildings, each a thousand feet square, built on opposite sides of the Fifth Avenue, between Forty-fifth Street and the Park, and connected by a grand triumphal The other I would An as could be collected in our own and other countries. other gallery might be devoted to machinery and the mechanic arts; another to the history of our Indians, and InInsatiate Public! Will not one such temple suf- dian relics and curiosities; another to discoveries in all fice? What is it that the poor artists have not parts of the world, and to be called the Gallery of Discovdone that, just as their spacious and splendid Acad-eries; another for astronomical and scientific purposes; emy is finished, they should be so sharply taken to task? The correspondent answers the question he suggests. "Having spent all their fund on this new Academy of Design, they have got only an exhibition-room, where the works of a certain number of American artists can be seen for six weeks or two months in the year, and kept closed all the remainder." and still another in which valuable and curious relics of The patient and earnest gentlemen who collected by incessant pains the money necessary to build the present Academy would be the very first to salute the rising walls of the other which this glowing pen thus describes. They will learn with eager pleasure that the suggestion "is not the extravagant whim of a dreamer," and they will perceive at once its practicability as set forth by the projector: "How and by what means is this institution to be built? for built it must be. There are at least forty millionaires in New York, each of whom could contribute half a million toward such an enterprise without missing it, and in But it is doubtful that way perpetuate their names. either to enter into the spirit of such an enterprise or whether you could get any number of these gentlemen Now even if that were all the artists have done, it would seem to be a very venial offense. But they have done more. They have not only erected an exhibition-room for their own pictures during two months, but they first raised by patient assiduity among those who were giving most generously to the war a very large sum of money. This sum they expended in building a gallery, which is one of the most striking and beautiful ornaments of the city. This gallery not only gives them accommodation for their own exhibition, but is the best possible place for the exhibition of all other pictures and statues during the year. It also furnishes the properly appreciate its benefits. There is one man in most ample rooms for the permanent collection of New York, however, capable of entering into the spirit of casts owned by the Academy, representing the such an enterprise and fully appreciating its future benegreatest statuary in the world. It includes, like-fits, and that man is A. T Stewart. Here is a man opwise, lecture-rooms, schools for drawing from the life-model, and spacious rooms for the transaction of the business of the Academy; and undoubtedly it is as large and convenient a building as the time and country demand. Not at all, says the correspondent of high imagination, whose letter is so really interesting as a finely flowering fancy-not at all. "It is high time the principles, or, more properly, the theory, were changed, and that, instead of confining their ideas within the limits of their own peculiar fancies, these artists took more practical views of what the public needed and their own interests demand ed." What, then, is it which the Public needs and the interests of artists demands? No sooner has our pressed with the world's bounties, with more millions members from the city." It is plain enough that the millions expended in the erection of this building would be an unprece- | There is no more touching and manly corresponddently liberal investment in at least one spectacle ence than the letters which passed between them for all members from the city, and such a spectacle upon the opening of Grant's campaign. as even Rome did not see when she beheld the Golden House of Nero. We do not mean to laugh at this programme. Nothing can be more natural after the war than such a suggestion. For what is not a nation capable of doing which has done what this nation has during the last five years? Such a benefactor as the letter describes is the ideal American millionaire. Such a building as is foreshadowed is a microcosm of American catholicity. The whole letter reads like a poem-a song of triumph-a dithyrambic ode of national glory. But first, fine flowering fancy! let us develop and complete the men worthy of such halls and temples and those will follow. Let the men be monumental of that justice, law, and fraternity which keep the world in tune, and which make the poorest faces shine and the saddest hearts beat with hope and happiness; and then our museums of art and science, however splendid and universal, will not put us to shame. The America of the future will be all that any poet dreams, provided only that we begin at the beginning and remember that America is to be only the fruit of Americans. Lieutenant-Generals are not always the least conceited and most reticent of men, but General Grant's silence is admirable and remarkable. He has publicly expressed no opinion in regard to policy except in reply to Mr. Beekman at the Union League Club in New York, when he wished to be "counted in" in any Mexican settlement; and the very striking phrase in his letter to some friends in Memphis in 1863, when he said, speaking of his army: "They will rejoice with me that the miserable adherents of the rebellion, whom their bayonets have driven from this fair land, are being replaced by men who acknowledge human liberty as the only true foundation of human government." We do not recall any nobler and truer sentiment in any speech of the times. If this silence were a studied policy it would be astute, but it is clearly natural. Many of our conspicuous public men slew themselves with their own tongues and pens. Indeed there was always some terrible nobody who, after the candidate was comfortably nominated, and had bashfully accepted, and all the party machinery was just being well oiled for tremendous action, stalked into the newspapers with a letter asking the candidate's yea or nay upon some perilous points. The letter had been, of course, previously sent and the answer received, and this stray shot often brought down the most promising game. For candidates are be mon-sense, escapes them. They say the most unlucky things. They commit themselves upon the most improper points. They frighten their friends and confound their party; and finally they defeat themselves. GENERAL GRANT was in New York for a. few days in November, and New York gave him a characteristic welcome. He was made the victim of one of those "receptions" in which enormous sums of money are spent and every body is crushed, en-witched. Their prudence, and almost their comraged, and disgusted. It is a ceremony in which every person concerned is a little ridiculous, and nobody is truly honored. The cheers of a crowd shouting from admiring hearts as their hero passes is a homage of which the most modest man might be proud; but a "party" to which admission is bought by money or granted by favor, and which represents nothing whatever but the vanity and folly of the people who pay for it, is a performance worthy only of Little Pedlington. A drive with Mr. Robert Bonner and a famous trotting horse is a real thing; but the crowd at the Fifth Avenue hotel is the most ludicrous phantom of a reality. It was amusing to observe that those who could find no want of dignity in General Grant's submitting to be hustled by a mob of his fellow-citizens in castly clothes were shocked by his driving with the fast trotter. Tastes fairly differ, but a modest soldier would be very likely to enjoy the drive more than the mob. We hope now that General Grant has run this kind of gauntlet for the last time, and that he may literally enjoy the freedom of the city when he comes again to New York. He is a man justly dear to the people for a simplicity, persistence, and honesty which recall those of Mr. Lincoln. He can also hold his tongue, which is wonderful in an American, and he had never entered Richmondat least up to the time when he was in New York. A certain homeliness of aspect and demeanor only commend him more closely to the popular heart, which contrasts that Yankee plainness and immense results with the military dandyism and rhetoric of any young Napoleons who may have flickered for a moment in our history, and whose very nickname shows the imitative, foreign, and factitious character of the men. Grant is as characteristically American as Lincoln; and it is impossible not to believe in the perfect accord of the two men. Mr. Lincoln was the sole public man in this country who constantly helped himself by his speeches and letters. They were so pointed and simple and honest and racy, that nobody could misunderstand, and every body who wished well to the country could assent. The squatter in his camp cabin upon the remotest prairie spelling out the solid sense by a torch, and the banker in his pleasant parlor, could each feel the sagacity of the President's words. He had too much mother-wit to be outwitted; and was too simple to be thought cunning. Upon several occasions official craft tried to catch him, and was dreadfully caught instead. The heart of the American people knew its own child, and undoubtedly it recognizes something kindred in General Grant. It will be curious to see whether, like Mr. Lincoln, he will constantly confirm the favor with which he is regarded; whether the same quiet sagacity which carried him triumphant through all the clouds of war will conduct him with equal success through the more baffling cloud of peace. WITH the end of the war there has been a natural increase of newspapers and magazines; and as the circumstances of the country and the conditions and necessities of life in America will confine the reading of most men to periodicals, their character becomes a matter of public importance. It is not easy to gauge the exact influence of a daily or weekly paper in moulding public opinion; but there is no question that the press is the most powerful of all the methods by which opinion is enlightened and swayed. The country is governed by Public opinion. Discussion is the duty of free citizens. the head, overflowed Blackwood with sparkling saThe tongue and the pen are the most precious pub-i tire, ridicule, and banter. They were the Mohocks lic possessions we have; whatever, therefore, threat- of literature. The "town" rang with their good ens their freedom threatens the public peace and things. They yelled and danced around their vicprogress, and the security of the nation will be in tims like Indians around their prisoners at the stake. exact proportion to the perfect freedom of speech It was flashing, dashing, smashing; but, after all, and the press. if you are going to try to do Maginn's work, you must begin by being Maginn: and then Maginn's work, of that kind, is not worth doing at all. Of course the responsibility of writers for the press is great and sacred. It is the condition of whatever appears in that form that it comes with a mysterious force, a glamour of importance, which the mere word of the writer could not command. This springs from the fact that print infinitely multiplies the chances of its reaching a multitude of minds, and that print itself has a secret impressiveness for the great mass of the people. There is a still vital conviction that Dr. Faustus has some subtle pact with the Devil. A journal is not and can hardly ever be regarded as the mere mouth-piece of an individual, because it is felt that its opinions are those of a party or of a sect or of a number of persons specially devoted to some purpose. The papers are organs of public opinion rather than the tongues of single persons. But this general conviction extends itself beyond fair limits, and includes those matters which are exclusively points of private feeling and judgment. Such are reviews of books and criticisms of authors. It is in this department that the opinions expressed by periodicals of every kind are strictly personal, and represent no great public sentiment or tendency. And it is here that the temptation is strongest to indulge private piques or hostility, and play the bravo in the world of letters. Perhaps it is a hardly less tempting opportunity to play the jester also. " A It is a good rule for a man who has written a "spicy" criticism upon the work of another, whether in literature, art, science-whatever it may be-to ask himself and to answer honestly, How much of this have I done for my own glorification, how much for the real advantage of other men, and how much to help the author?" For we help a man often by censure as much as by praise. Now if you think this is too fine, and that no man will be apt to scale such an Alp of virtue when he has just done a "smart" thing; then let him ask himself this: "In what I have written censuring this author have I probably personally pained him? Have I made my points so clear and reasonable that, however he may regret them, however he may feel mortified, yet he can not fairly say that I have been unjust to him, and have not unfairly held him up to public ridicule?" of course such a question will be asked only when the author has written in good faith. If he has been ridiculous, he can not complain that you make him appear so. When Tupper puts forth his limpid platitudes, for instance, nothing is easier and fairer than to show that they are platitudes: but nothing is more absurd than to laugh at him for not being Shakespeare. Because a worthy man publishes a book of moral essays which are not original nor profound, but are a pleasant repetition of homely and time-honored truths, commonplaces, if you will, but which by their new setting arrest the mind and reach the life of many and many whom the old forms of the same truths left untouched, surely it is a very poor business to laugh at the book for not rivaling Bacon or Elia, or even because it "Says an undisputed thing In such a solemn way." We have been reminded of these things by certain articles which have lately appeared upon various books and authors in various periodicals. Works and workers have been slashed, tomahawked, and adorned with the cap and bells without mercy. Satire, which is a thin veneer of ill-feeling, is, at best, a poor but tempting literary style; and satire, which is plainly free from personality, but which is displayed as plainly for the advantage of the writer, are both, surely, sorry business. Nobody is swifter than this Easy Chair to admit the laxity and shal- If a writer is plainly a coxcomb, say so, but show lowness of much criticism. Where the press is it. Don't let it rest upon your assertion. Be both cheap and free that will be always the case. willing to have your perception, which is your creNobody more than the same piece of furniture is dential for criticising, judged as fairly and fully as ready to protest against the practical venality of the folly you specify. The critic is a juryman renmuch of the current book-noticing in newspapers dering a verdict. Let him be ready with the testiand elsewhere, where there seems to be a tacit un-mony if he wishes that justice and not his word derstanding that the continuance of the publisher's shall prevail. advertisements and the sending of books for notice shall depend upon the frequency and the high praise of notices. However, few readers are deceived by such performances. Long habit has taught them that the brief commendations of books which appear in many papers are merely highly flavored advertisements. The reader confides in them no more than he confides in a perfumer's eulogies of his wares. It is the humane spirit rather than the form which makes a criticism valuable. A criticism may be as severe as the edge of a sword is sharp, if only its temper be true. But a sour, sulky, disappointed man who hates the world because the world does not like his performances, will never censure sweetly nor criticise soundly the performances of more fortunate men. There is all the more reason, therefore, that those THE gauntlet of the pulpit is very seldom direetwho do not write brief paragraphs of praise, but who ly taken up. A clergyman denounces men in gengravely discuss authors and their works by the col-eral and vice in the abstract, and men sleep and vice umn, should remember the real dignity and respons- flourishes unconcerned. He may even specify avaibility of their task, and not prostitute it to pander rice, or drunkenness, or gaming, and the misers, even to "a smart hit," or "a lively, spicy article." bar-keepers, and gamblers make no sign. But now Sixty years ago the young British wits in Edin- and then he draws blood. At last he strikes a blow burgh threw off the effervescence of their talent which reacts. His condemnation is returned upon into the pages of the Review there. Forty years him, and he must take care that his pulpit does not ago a more roystering crew, with Dr. Maginn at suddenly become his pillory. |