rnor. But there was one
philological change that proved too great even for his generalship. The
word "lunacy," as we know, comes from "luna," the belief in the good old
days being that the moon exercised a profound influence on the wits of
sundry people. I'm told that the idea still holds good in certain
quarters, and that if the wind is east and the moon shows a horn on which
you can hang a flatiron, certain persons are looked upon askance and the
children cautioned to avoid them.

Seward said that insane people were simply those who were mentally ill,
and that "Hospital" was the proper term. But the classicists retorted,
"Nay, nay, William Henry, you have had your way in many things and here we
will now have ours." It has taken us full a century officially to make the
change, and the plain folks from the hills still refuse to ratify it, and
will for many a lustrum.

It was during Seward's administration that the "debtors' prison" was done
away with, and it was, too, through his earnest recommendation that the
last trace of law for slaveholding was wiped from the statute-books of the
State of New York.

The question of slavery was taken up most exhaustively in what was known
as the "Virginia Controversy." This interesting correspondence can be seen
in a stout volume in most public libraries. It is a series of letters that
passed between Governor Seward of New York and the Governor of Virginia,
as to the requisition of two persons in New York charged by the Governor
of Virginia with abducting slaves. Seward made the patent point, and
backed it up with a forest of reasons in politest English, that the
accused persons being charged with abducting slaves, and there being no
such thing as slaves known in New York, no person in New York could be
apprehended for stealing slaves--for slaves were things that had no
existence.

Then did the Governor of Virginia admit that slaves could not be abducted
in New York; but he proceeded to explain in lusty tomes that slavery
legally existed in Virginia, and that if slaves were abducted in Virginia,
the criminal nature of the act could not be shaken off because the accused
changed his geographical base. Seward was a prince of logicians: the
subtleties of reasoning and the smoke of rhetoric were to his fancy, and
although there is not a visible smile in the whole "Virginia Controversy,"
I can not but think that his sleeves were puffed with laughter as he
searched the universe for rea