more
Americano_ of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular
flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the
prince of courtesy--as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It
will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor
of it.

GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct
historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The
spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of
him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be
made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care
of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air
surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible
record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The
tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works
of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can
picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that
scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up
the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical
argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of
government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art
wither quickly.

ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of
the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do
so, would I?

SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs--putting in his oar, so
to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other
evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen
present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a
rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced
by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece
of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it
imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special
branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work
requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing
an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are
employed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular
indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application,
finds himself lacking the steadines