saw him kill his antagonist and
tear the scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed
furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my
lance through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to
my father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."

This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked
him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous
epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one
else escaped.

If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were
floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago,
he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he
never heard of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned
in the little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have
not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still
flourishing in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time
dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and
instruction, as he had dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter
at last under a roof which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen
better and many of whom had known worse days than those which they were
passing within its friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least,
was the story I heard after he disappeared from general observation.

That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and
all that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations of
this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility. The "Voices of the
Night" had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still
in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes,
which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have
shrunk into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature
by a scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.

What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations,
floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirrorin