gerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.

Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects
himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our
fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs
his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar
twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not
quite right yet.--Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought
to be. Let us settle _that_ where it should be, and _then_ we shall
certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old
lady adjusts her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten
washing herself.--Poor fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he
has to deal with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet,
he would see they were _Fly-Paper_.--So with us, when, in our waking
misery, we try to think we dream! Perhaps very young persons may not
understand this; as we grow older, our waking and dreaming life run more
and more into each other.

Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of
old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be
had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must
go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner
nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand
on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine
right of its telegraphic despatches.

War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of
Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the
Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll,
which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, then growing
uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from the neighboring
heights at all hours,--in token of which see the tower of Brattle-Street
Church at this very day? War in her memory means '76. As for the brush
of 1812, "we did not think much about that"; and everybody knows that
the Mexican business did not concern us much, except in its political
relations. No! War is a new thing to all of us who are not in the last
quarter of their century. We are learning many strange matters from our
fresh experience. And besides, there are new conditions of existence
which make war as it is with us very different from war as it has been.

The firs