n' here, ner ministeril taxes;
The min'ster's only settlement 's the carpet-bag he packs his
Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hymbook an' his Bible,--
But they _du_ preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib'le!
They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric ingine,
An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he's used to
singein';
Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the innards
To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' tough old sin-hards!

But I must eend this letter now: 'fore long I'll send a fresh un;
I've lots o' things to write about, perticklerly Seceshun:
I'm called off now to mission-work, to let a leetle law in
To Cynthy's hide: an' so, till death,

Yourn,

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.

* * * * *

OLD AGE.

On the last anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, the
venerable President Quincy, senior member of the Society, as well as
senior alumnus of the University, was received at the dinner with peculiar
demonstrations of respect. He replied to these compliments in a speech,
and, gracefully claiming the privileges of a literary society, entered at
some length into an Apology for Old Age, and, aiding himself by notes in
his hand, made a sort of running commentary on Cicero's chapter "De
Senectute." The character of the speaker, the transparent good faith of
his praise and blame, and the _naivete_ of his eager preference of
Cicero's opinions to King David's, gave unusual interest to the College
festival. It was a discourse full of dignity, honoring him who spoke and
those who heard.

The speech led me to look over at home--an easy task--Cicero's famous
essay, charming by its uniform rhetorical merit; heroic with Stoical
precepts; with a Roman eye to the claims of the State; happiest, perhaps,
in his praise of life on the farm; and rising, at the conclusion, to a
lofty strain. But he does not exhaust the subject; rather invites the
attempt to add traits to the picture from our broader modern life.

Cicero makes no reference to the illusions which cling to the element of
time, and in which Nature delights. Wellington, in speaking of military
men, said,--"What masks are these uniforms to hide cowards! When our
journal is published, many statues must come down." I have often detected
the like deception in the clot