t,
receive, from the accidental discharge of a field-piece, an honorable
and soldier-like wound, and of which he ever after boasted louder, and
took more pride in, than the bravest veteran in Grant's gallant army of
the scars and injuries received at the siege of Vicksburg? And no wonder
at that, perhaps. For you will find hundreds who have been cut by the
sword or pierced by the bullet of a Rebel, to one who has been ever so
slightly wounded upon a holiday training-field.

But I never could, and I never shall, abide the sight of the red and
ruthless flag of the vendue-master. 'Tis a signal that death is still
busy, and that to many the love of money is greater than the love of
friends and of those nearer and dearer than friends,--that fortune is
fickle and that prosperity has fled,--that humbugs and sharpers are
alive and active. 'Tis a reminder--and therefore may have its use in the
world--of our mortality, an admonisher of our pride, a represser of our
love of greed and gain. 'Tis evidently an invention of Satan's, this
selling by vendue; and perhaps the first auction was that by which Cain
sold the house and furniture of his brother Abel, then lately deceased.
If there were no such thing in the world as death and misfortune and
humbug, that bit of blood-colored bunting would be but seldom flaunting
in the wind.

Charles Lamb counsels those who would enjoy true peace and quiet to
retire into a Quaker meeting; and if our sentimental readers (and for
such only is this paper written) would find wherewithal to feed and
pamper their melancholy, let them follow the mercenary flags, and become
haunters of auctions,--let them attend the sales of the effects of their
deceased friends and acquaintances,--let them see A's favorite horse, or
B's favorite country-seat, or C's favorite books and pictures knocked
down, amid the laughter of the crowd and the smart sayings and witty
retorts of the auctioneer, to the highest bidder,--and they will be
sadder, if not wiser, men than they were before. Such scenes should have
more effect on them than all the fine sermons on the vanities and
nothings of life ever preached. Sir Richard Steele, in his beautiful
paper, in the "Tatler," on "The Death of Friends," says, in speaking of
his mother's sorrow for his father's death, there was a dignity in her
grief amidst all the wildness of her transport that made pity the
weakness of his heart ever since; and perhaps it is owing to the
impressio