her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out
her arms and asks us to come to her.

But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that
little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken
away from us and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get into
our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire revenge of
going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we get our
dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more than
enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither as a
hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is boiling
over, and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold, and gulp
down our dignity along with it.

Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of a great statesman, and, if
it be great statesmanship to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the
Spirit of the Age with the certainty of being next moment hurled neck
and heels into the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves the title.
He is the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should remember the old
Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of gods, but he could not
wrestle with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the great snake
which knit the universe together; and when he smote the Earth, though
with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet all
the while it seemed to Thor that he had only been wrestling with an old
woman, striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head.

And in old times, doubtless, the giants _were_ stupid, and there was no
better sport for the Sir Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about
cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. But
things have wonderfully changed. It is the giants, now-a-days, that have
the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of
Conservatism still cumber themselves with the clumsy armour of a by-gone
age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its
cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half
shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy
morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting
slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor
South Carolina upon the bank and shoal of the Past.--H. W.]

TO MR. BUCKENAM.

MR. EDITER, As i wuz kinder prunin round, in a little nussry sot out a
y