ewspapers, don't want brother Jack's assistance to blow
up each other!"

Uncle Jack (mysteriously).--"Newspapers! you don't often read a
newspaper, Austin Caxton!"

Mr. Caxton.--"Granted, John Tibbets!"

Uncle Jack.--"But if my speculation make you read a newspaper every
day?"

Mr. Caxton (astounded).--"Make me read a newspaper every day!"

Uncle Jack (warming, and expanding his hands to the fire).--"As big as
the 'Times'!"

Mr. Caxton (uneasily).--"Jack, you alarm me!"

Uncle Jack.--"And make you write in it too,--a leader!"

Mr. Caxton, pushing back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his
command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek,--"... a
quotation in Greek..." (1)

Uncle Jack (nothing daunted).--"Ay, and put as much Greek as you like
into it!"

Mr. Caxton (relieved and softening). "My dear Jack, you are a great man;
let us hear you!"

Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that
this illustrious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His
speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel,
considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made
him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am
convinced, make a man's fortune one of these days; and I relate it with
a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then,
it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the
"Times," but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,--Mental
Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the "Times," for it was to
imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be
the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder
over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts
of the globe; everything that related to the chronicle of the mind, from
the labor of the missionary in the South Sea Islands, or the research of
a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to the last new
novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek particle at a
German university, was to find a place in this focus of light. It was
to amuse, to instruct, to interest,--there was nothing it was not to do.
Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms,
not only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it
was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most
crotchety member of the