your Harlaem rail-road? I want to go back to
town!' Such would probably be his first go-off; and the next impulse would
be to run, shout, cry fire! or murder!--any thing to produce a sensation;
but unless very soon about it, he would find himself yielding to some
strange influence hitherto unfelt; and it would be amusing to notice how
soon the fretting restless man of the forty-second latitude would be tamed
down in the thirteenth to the equanimity of a child asleep. The climate
enters within the man, and brings out one by one some hidden and better
impulse, at the same time laying a gentle hand upon his rougher humors; so
that when he would shout, he hums, and when he would laugh, he smiles
only; and in undertaking to run, he is caught about the waist; and goes
floating smoothly around in the ground-swell motion of the Spanish-dance.'
. . . WE perceive that the _Copy-right Question_ has been thus early
brought before the National Legislature. From the present aspect of things
we may indulge a well-grounded hope that authors who have worn themselves
out in making other people happy, will not hereafter be left to perish
amidst age and infirmity, unrelieved by the fruit of their labors. There
is one argument exceedingly well illustrated in the recent address of the
'Copy-right Club.' In allusion to the floods of trash which have for
months inundated the Atlantic cities and towns, the writer, addressing
himself to American citizens, observes: 'In all other circumstances and
questions save that of a literature, you have taken the high ground of
freedom and self-reliance. You have neither asked, nor loaned, nor
besought, but with your own hands have framed, what the occasion required.
Whatever stature you have grown to as a nation, it is due to that sole
virtue; and by its exercise may you only hope to hold your place. In
almost any other shape than that of silent books you would have spurned
the foreign and held fast to the home-born; but stealing in quietly at
every opening, making themselves the seemingly inoffensive and unobtrusive
lodgers in every house, they have full possession of the country in all
its parts; and another people may promise themselves in the next
generation of Americans, (as the question now goes,) a restored dominion
which their arms were not able to keep. The pamphlet will carry the day
where the soldier fell back.' . . . WE derive the annexed stanzas through
a Boston correspondent. He assures us that