l the good things for themselves. That's the reason people are
always praising modest merit, while they are pushing along without either
the one or the other. You always let go when any body's going to take your
place at table; you always hold back when another person's wanting the
last of the nice things on the dish. That's not the way; bow and nod, and
show your teeth with a fascination, but take what you want for all that.
This is manners--knowing the world. To be polite is to have your own way
gracefully; other people are delighted at your style--you have the
profit.' . . . THE reader will not overlook the '_Alligatorical Sketch_'
in preceding pages. We begin to perceive how much the alligator has been
slandered. It _yawns_ merely, it would seem; and the only care requisite
is, to be absent when its jaws close! 'The 'gator isn't what you may call
a _han'some_ critter, but there's a great deal of _openness_ when he
smiles!' The _smile_ of an alligator!! . . . 'Cleanliness,' says FULLER,
'is godliness;' and he is not far out of the way; for no man, we think,
can be a dirty Christian. In a moral and religious point of view, then, we
are doing good service in calling public attention to the spacious baths
of Mr. CHARLES RABINEAU, at the Astor-House, and at his new establishment
at Number 123 Broadway, Albany. Go wash in them and be clean, reader, and
thank us for the joy which you will experience, when you shall have come
out of the water and gone your ways. . . . ONE of the late London
pictorial publications contains a portrait of Sir HUDSON LOWE, the
notorious keeper of NAPOLEON, the Emperor of the French, at St. Helena. It
is in perfect keeping with the generally received estimate of the
character of that functionary. The wretched thatch that disfigures without
concealing the intellectual poverty of his narrow skull; the scowling
features; the ragged penthouse brows; are 'close denotements' of the truth
of 'Common Report.' In short, judging from the much-bepraised 'likeness'
to which we allude, if Sir HUDSON LOWE was not a tyrant, and a
small-minded one withal, GOD doesn't write a legible hand. . . . SOME
clever wag in the last BLACKWOOD has an article, written in a hurry, upon
the _hurriedness_ of literary matters in these our 'go-ahead' days.
'People,' he says, 'have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned
things called books, but even to read them. Instead of cutting new works
page by page, they cut them alto