A TRIP IN A FISHING IN SCHOONER. October of 1873 I arrived on the coast of Cape Breton in the good bark Ethan Allen, homeward-bound from Madeira. The exceptionally favorable winds we had enjoyed now left us, and it was only after battling with heavy squalls and gales and adverse currents for several days, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, that we succeeded in making the port for which we were bound, and we were quite able after that to realize why insurance premiums are doubled after October sets in on all vessels sailing for that inhospitable coast. It took all day to beat up the long, narrow entrance to Sydney harbor, and we passed a steamer which had gone on the bar in a gale two days before. The prospect was rendered still more cheerful by a crowd of damaged vessels which had been wholly or partially wrecked in the appalling hurricane of the previous August. Of Sydney little can be said that is inviting. The lay of the land is very much that of our own New England, but vegetation is more sparse, and the general appearance of the landscape more sad and sear. The bay is spacious and well protected, affording several excellent harbors for ordinary weather, but the town presents a singular blending of squalor and thrift, the former being the first feature to impress the stranger on landing. Shanties and groggeries, disreputable to a degree, abound, and lead one to think he has fallen on some maritime Laramie or Cheyenne, while to the westward new houses, glorying in the tawdriness of white paint, green shutters, and flimsy verandas, indicate that the place is not altogether going to the dogs. Coal is the chief stock in trade, and the supply is apparently inexhaustible; the whole island is, in fact, intersected by seams of the black mineral. The veins run under the harbor at Sydney, and are worked to a considerable depth. The population is, consequently, mining, combined with a large floating class of fishermen and seamen, ever ready to "splice the main-brace" and chuck the rosy girls of Cape Breton under the chin. It must be added that they do not always stop there, and street brawls, as may be easily imagined, are not uncommon. It is difficult to fancy any one lying awake o' nights sighing for Sydney. This port has of late years become a great resort for our mackerel-fishermen. It is not far from Cape North, one of the fishinggrounds, and the fish are also found toward the close of the season off the harbor. Seventy of our schooners made Sydney a rendezvous during the previous summer, and it is indeed a stirring and beautiful spectacle to see the graceful little craft dodging up and down the long entrance to the harbor, or darting hither and thither in white groups, like sea-fowl, in search of schools of mackerel. So fascinated was I by the sight of these schooners that, on finding my bark was not going to return to Boston, I at once decided to get passage in one of the schooners, if possible, in preference to the steamer. Fortune seemed to favor me. The skipper of the Anna Maria came aboard to bring us some fresh mackerel, and told us he was to start the following morning for home, going, for the first time, by way of the Bras d'Or, which I had long wished to see. He kindly offered me a bunk and a share of grub for myself and dog. I jumped at the proposal, and early the next day sent my traps aboard; we peaked the mainsail, tripped the anchor, and stood out to sea. The Anna Maria was twenty-four years old, forty-one tons burden, and had a small forecastle and a diminutive trunk-cabin aft; five men slept forward, and there were six of us, or seven including a dog, in the cuddy. The deck was lumbered up with a quantity of fish-barrels and tubs, and the whole vessel was in an unmentionable state of dirtiness, resulting from twelve weeks of fishing. There are two entrances to the remarkable sea-lake called the Bras d'Or, which separates Cape Breton Island into two nearly equal portions. Within a short time a canal, scarcely half a mile long, has been cut through the isthmus, permitting the passage of vessels of small burden. It is about sixty miles from the two eastern straits or entrances to the canal. The southern entrance is impassable except for steamers and boats. We struck for the northern passage called the Great Bras d'Or, having a leading wind, without which it is impossible for a sailingvessel to pass in. The navigable channel is very narrow, the tide runs through it like a mill-race, and, for the first few miles, any vessel getting ashore there is exposed to the full sweep of easterly gales. There were seven schooners in company with us, all keeping so closely together that the bowsprit of one would almost overhang the taffrail of the next one; sometimes one would becalm another, and thus shoot by. Finally, one of the schooners got slewed aside on a bank, and had to be left behind to get off as she could. Happily for the rest, a pilot appeared at this juncture in a dory, and agreed to pilot the little fleet. He carried us as far as Kelly's Cove, when, fog and twilight both coming on, we all dropped anchor, and the pilot proceeded to levy toll before leaving us for the night. He was a curious specimen of the genus Bretoniensis. Keeping his eyes always down, while he hung on to the side of the vessel, he rattled away with great volubility, which was evidently increased by the bad whiskey he had taken before coming off to us. "I don't care for any bluidy silver. A little bluidy pork or beef, a little bluidy salt or bluidy jigs, you don't want any more, my hearties, or any other bluidy thing will do me just exactly as well. I should be only too glad to take such a pretty schooner through them narrows for nothink, but don't ye sees we can't do nothink for nothink in Cape Breton no more than nowheres else. And that's the truth. That'll do, that'll do. I don't want ye to rob yourselves.-Fish-bait ? no, got enough of the bluidy thing. There's no need of my coming off to ye the mornin', all ye've got to do is just to keep that p'int close aboard, and ye'll be all right; and remimber them two spar-buoys on the starboard beam, and one on the port, and there ain't no other bluidy thing in the channel that the likes o' ye need to be afeard of; and I'm very much obleeged to ye, gintlemen, and I wish ye a pleasant v'yage," and off he went to repeat the farce at the next schooner. We found ourselves anchored for the night in Kelly's Cove, under Kelly's Mountain, the highest land on the Bras d'Or. It is an isolated ridge, which I estimated to be about twelve hundred feet high, but so bold as to resemble a wall, and give an impression of greater height. Evidences of the tremendous hurricane of the previous September were everywhere visible. The wind had felled the largest forest-trees in ranks mile after mile, or where the squalls had been most violent had cut swathes through the woods as the scythe of the mower lays the grass. This was the case all through the Bras d'Or. Many houses and barns were felled or injured; at Arichat sixty houses were blown down. Vessels were everywhere destroyed; all through the trip we came across wrecks on shore. The boat was lowered, and skipper and I went ashore on a foraging expedition among the farm-houses. We found the people generally were "Heelanders," as they called themselves, among whom Gaelic is still the vernacular; some actually being unable to converse in English. They were mostly Roman Catholics. We finally brought up at a small house, where we spent a couple of hours chatting before an old-fashioned ingleside, over whose bright blaze the kettle was singing. A dance at a farm-house farther on was proposed, and skipper offered to bring off the schooner's fiddler to stimulate the heels and quicken the hearts of the lads and lassies; but, owing to the lateness of the hour, the plan unfortunately fell through. A brace of geese and a pail of milk were the results of our expedition; it was so dark that the buxom hostess snatched a brand from the hearth, and gave it to us by way of lantern, and we thus reached the boat without spilling the milk. We were again under weigh the next morning, but the wind was so light we made but little progress. The good weather was improved to clear the deck and clean the vessel. We passed some plaster - cliffs, which furnish material for many of the best ceilings in our cities, and add a striking feature to the scenery. We also had a fine view up the Little Bras d'Or, and left the shire town of Baddeck on our right, at the bottom of a deep bay. At night we again anchored, at Grand Narrows, and skipper and I repeated our foraging expedition. We were lucky enough to come across some very nice people, bearing the famous names of McNiel and McDonald, Roman Catholics, but well-informed, and familiar with the best writers of the day. They entertained us so hospitably that I was moved to send them a little Madeira the next morning, and, in consequence, just after we were under weigh, a boat overtook us, bringing a supply of milk and eggs, which very materially added to the slender stock of pork, beans, and molasses, which constituted the commissariat of the Anna Maria. But generally the people are a pretty rough set, with a decided talent for brawling and drinking. When we were going aboard at night we came across three sturdy fellows, well braced with gin, and altogether too willing to fire off the guns they carried to make them pleasant companions. After leaving Grand Narrows the passage widened into a broad lake some twenty miles across at the widest, deeply indented with bays and studded with large islands. Fish and game abound here, we were informed. At sundown the fleet was becalmed in the middle of the lake, which was glowing and magnificent beyond description under the splendor of a sunset of extraordinary beauty and variety of tint and hue. As I gazed entranced on that spectacle I did not wonder that they called that sea-strait, so rarely combining lake and river, the Bras d'Or. Golden were its shores, golden its waters, and golden the tranquil sky which overhung and imparted to it half its wealth of beauty. The shooting-stars and the night-breeze came together, and we watched the one and fanned gently along before the other, until at midnight we again neared dangerous naviga. tion, and came to an anchor. On the following day we passed a noted Indian settlement, where there is a large church with some wigwams. The Indians of this region assemble in spring and summer on their island, and attempt to keep up the dances and other ceremonies peculiar to their ancestors. The scenery now became exceedingly romantic and beautiful, often resembling the Thousand Islands, and the region is so little inhabited as scarcely to seem a country that has been settled for two hundred years. Islands of all sizes, sometimes mere knolls tufted with birches and pines, divide the lake into numerous winding channels for a long distance. The ship-channel is often so narrow and tortuous that it was with great difficulty that even our short schooners, capable of turning within their own lengths, could be worked without going ashore. One of them here ran her nose into a mud-bank, on which we also touched, and so firmly that she lay there several days. Just before evening the Anna Maria, heading the fleet, reached the canal at St. Peter's. In an hour she was again on the Atlantic, but so difficult is the way out into the harbor that we touched on a rock in a dangerous situation. While we were getting her off, a party of Indians landed close under our lee, and in a very few minutes they had put up several bark wigwams, and the dusky shades of evening were rendered picturesque by the smoky gleams of their fires. The little cove where we were lying, the forests on one side and the wigwams and strange forms moving before the light and reflected in the water, the last lingering rays of sunset on the other, vividly outlining the rakish spars of the pinks rocking in the port; the splash and swing of warps in the water; the quick movement of boats here and there, with phosphorescent drops twinkling on the oars; the shadow of the spars, and the tread of feet on the deck, as schooner after schooner warped past us in the starry gloom-presented a singular and effective scene. Early the next morning we worked out of St. Peter's by Madame Island. The threatening character of the weather inclined us to go into Arichat, but a land-breeze sprang up after sunset. All night we flew before it under press of sail, and next morning had run one hundred and forty miles, and were abreast of Halifax. On the following day our good weather came to an end. A gale was coming on, and, after pounding with a heavy sea several hours and starting a leak, we were just able to work into Shelburne, where we lay three days. Shelburne possesses the finest harbor in Nova Scotia. What is also in its favor is that it is easy of access, and is often made a harbor of refuge. The settlement is, however, but a wretched makeshift for a town, like most places in the eastern provinces, but has considerable ship-building, which gives it some appearance of thrift. It also abounds with herring, which are eaten in such quantities by the Bluenoses that it is said of them they cannot pull off their shirts in spring because of the fish-bones sticking through their skin! The weather was still dubious when we put to sea in company with fifteen sail, all bound to the westward, but we hoped the easterly wind would hold to take us across the Bay of Fundy, the worst bit of navigation, owing to its fogs, rips, reefs, tides, and currents, to be found anywhere on the coast of North America. But, in fact, nowhere does a close inspection of the ledges along the Nova Scotia shore inspire one with pleasing sensations, nor are such names as Ironbound or Ragged Harbor pleasingly suggestive. I never can pass that forbidding coast without thinking of some grim monster showing his teeth ready to crunch the bones of hapless victims. The vigor with which the new Dominion has assumed the reins of government is nowhere more evident than in the increased attention bestowed on light-houses, which have hitherto been infamously scarce, considering the character of the coast, and have been badly kept and lighted. During the day we passed a large ship high and dry on a reef, going to pieces. The wind freshened at night, and we stood across the bay of Fundy in fine style. The next morning it was thick and nasty, blowing a gale of wind, with a heavy following sea. Wing-and-wing we "kihooted" before it under a press of sail such as only our fishermen indulge in. The least carelessness of the steersman might have sent us to the bottom. "A man must have his life insured who sails on the Anna Maria to-day," said one to me. At noon a violent squall obliged us to take in sail; they jibed the foresail and brought the lively little craft around just in time to get control of her, laying her half under water as she came up to the wind. We ran till night under close-reefed foresail, and then hove to near Cashe's Ledge till morning. Then the wind came howling out of the west, and, as the skipper forcibly expressed it, "it everlastingly screeched." We had but one suit of sails, they were old and worn, and the foresail split and gave us some trouble; our stock of provisions was running low, and there was some reason to fear we should be blown to the eastward again. During all these days the spinning of yarns went on without intermission fore-and-aft, and I gained new ideas of the constant and almost incredible perils to which our fishermen are exposed, especially on the Georges and off the Magdalen Islands. The most amusing circumstance was to see how through it all these hardy fellows managed to retain characteristics purely human; for example, the habit of croaking, and of finding fault with those on whom the responsibility devolved. Did the skipper carry sail hard, they said he did not know when to take it in; did he prudently seek to spare the only suit we had, or avoid running on the land in the fog, they said, "The worst fault a master of a ship can have is to take sail in too soon." Like unwhipped school-boys, they thought they knew every thing, and, like sailors in general, exercised very little foresight or prevision for contingencies. Of course on a vessel where all sailed on shares, any regular discipline was out of the question, the authority of the skipper being nearly nominal, the man making it rather than receiving it from the of fice. Our skipper was a man of the most imperturbable good-humor, but a good seaman, shrewdly adapting himself to the unruly spirits he had to deal with, and generally exercising control without appearing to do so. Come on, bullies, let's take a turn on the main sheet," was the usual form of an order; or, "Keep her off a little mite, Uncle Mike!" The watch usually consisted of two men, one at the wheel, and the other acting as lookout, and oscillating between the stove in the cabin and the bows, with a strong gravitation toward the former. The clock forward was half an hour ahead of the one aft; I don't know whether the fact was generally known, but I think it was known to some; I observed that some of the watches were shorter than others. One night two of the leading fault-finders were directed to tack ship in their watch, there being a heavy sea running at the time. Three times these self-sufficient fellows tried to bring the schooner about; three times they failed, mouthing enormous imprecations, and with such frequent mention of hell that I fancied I could smell brimstone. The skipper, meantime, quietly lay in his bunk, and enjoyed the discomfiture of his defamers. At last he put his head up the companion-way and said, "Your jib is eased off too much; haul down the jib and she'll come around all right!" They obeyed, and the schooner was off on the other tack at once. He said nothing more, but an hour after went on deck himself, and tacked ship with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. The men could say not a word. Another curious trait among sailors, especially noticeable among those so little under discipline as our fishermen, is the way they act in emergencies. The vessel, perhaps, is struck by a heavy squall, and sail must be taken off at once or the gravest consequences to all may ensue in a moment. One would suppose, therefore, that when the lives of all on board, including the crew themselves, are imperiled, and the quick orders of the captain summon all hands on deck without delay, they would need no further urging. Not a bit of it. The first thing they do is to ! We managed in the teeth of a violent wind to beat up as far as Cape Elizabeth, where we found the water a little smoother. But we should have kept on and made a harbor in the Sheepscot River, if the wind had not moderated after sunset, so as to enable us to work down to the Isles of Shoals, which we passed at daybreak. It took us the rest of the day to beat into Gloucester under a press of canvas, with a foot of water in our lee scuppers, and carrying away the maintopmast-staysail as we came abreast of Norman's Woe.. S. G. W. BENJAMIN. INNOMINATA. ASWEET and beautiful fancy I never shall know again, Once, as I sat in silence, Sang itself into my brain. And I said: "I will make a poem, "I will make a song and bring it "And my thought's delicious passion But, alas! when I came to make it- And down in my heart's dim corners, I cannot make a poem I cannot make a poem With just your darling name! So the world shall never know you, A sweet and pure renown. And, indeed, for you and for me, dear, That your glory is just Love's only, EDITOR'S TABLE. THE HE restoration of the drama to some- "Life in England has never been broader 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive; A strange sense of power thrilled us; and the 'The isle is full of noises, Nor could it be otherwise. A land so bright- 'that does not speak, The Review then proceeds to show how the drama was the one literature of the day, how, as books are with us of to-day the real thing, the theatre was a real thing to the people then. They believed in it. It was every thing to them the great centre of English art and thought, drawing to itself the highest intellects of the time, dealing with the gravest and highest questions, portraying with incomparable power the deepest and intensest passions. "It is true," remarks the Review, "that certain religionists stood aloof from it, but the nation, as a whole, rejoiced in it ardently." In brief, the argument is that all the circumstances and activities of the period built up the dazzling glory of the theatre, and that until we can reproduce those conditions and circumstances it is hopeless to look for any genuine reconstruction of the play as a literary power. This would seem to be convincing, but before we abandon all hope in the matter let us see what conditions now exist which may tend to bring back at least a little of the old dramatic spirit. During recent years there has been a marked revival of mediæval tastes. Color has been restored to decoration, interior adornment, and dress; the love of pomp and ceremony appears in ritualism; architecture has broken out into the picturesque; art is fired with new passion for divine tones and tints. There is a rage for old china and old pottery, for old upholstery, for polychromatic walls, for tiles, for inlaid furniture, for all things that have a rich, passional, and aesthetic character. The age, which in one of its phases is eminently scientific, skeptical, and inquisitive, in another phase is eminently imaginative and luxurious, delighting in every art that is stimulating, ideal, or sensuous. Whence this change has come about it is not our present purpose to inquire; but the fact that the change has come may well give us the belief that with this general revival the drama, so kindred to the new feeling in many particulars, is likely, also, to be restored. It scarcely can be doubted that Tennyson's dramatic attempt is not an idle experiment, but a natural outcome of the æsthetic forces at work, and we may believe that it will stir the latent fires in all his contemporaries. With this revival of mediæval tastes, there exist other conditions peculiarly favorable for a new era of the drama. Literature is necessarily the result of leisure; it bespeaks contemplation, calm, and a studious or meditative mind. The age, on the contrary, is full of bustle, movement, and pressure. Esthetic tastes are aroused and active, but æsthetic enjoyment must be snatched amid the hurrying activities of the time. Our lawyers, bankers, merchants, physicians, scientists, artists, and many others, cannot secure the leisure for the deliberate perusal of books. The imaginative need of their natures must find some swifter means for its gratification. They can look upon pictures, and be instantly filled with dreams of beauty; their statues and bronzes have the power to gratify instantaneously their love of the ennobling and the artistic; and, if not so swiftly, yet without large tax of time, the play opens to them vistas of poetry, awakens in them sentiment and emotion, stirs their imagination, and translates them from sordid cares and wearing anxieties into the domain of poetry and fancy. A really good play, thoroughly well acted, is the most potent thing in the world for filling the wearied brain with fresh ideas and exalted emotions. The service which the stage is thus so supremely capable of rendering in these stirring and busy days to the over-worked man of business is alone sufficient to make a restoration to its pristine place a thing not only probable, but something greatly to be desired. We thus see that the conditions for a dramatic renaissance are not so unfavorable, after all. Out of great energies and an abundant leisure came the drama of the past; out of equally great energies but an eager leisure may spring the drama of the future. There is but a slight suggestion of the sound And now let us ascertain how much time THE Christian at Work is quite confident that English "phonetic spelling would reduce the labor of writing and type-setting at least two-fifths," and that the spelling of a word ought to decide its pronunciation. Now, phonetic spelling cannot decide the pronunciation of a word unless accompanied with systematized vowel and other markings, and these would probably increase rather than reduce the labor of type-setting. If every compositor must not only know the correct orthography of a word, but its accepted pronunciation, and must select not only the right letter but the letter with the correct marking, his labor would become perplexing indeed. He would gain something in dropping the final e from words like hate, rate, etc., but must select the a with a long-sound marking, or he would wholly mislead the reader as to the meaning of the word employed. Nor would the labor of writing be much abridged if it were incumbent upon the writer to accurately mark all his vowels, and consonants having more than one sound, such as g, just as he now crosses his t's, and dots his 's. And when all were done, when words were shorn of their silent letters, and all practi-y in each is silent, and, in addition, one letter cable markings used, our orthography would still fail to indicate accurately the correct pronunciation of words, because as soon as a consonant unites with another letter it usually loses wholly or in part its own sound. may be saved in Tuesday, and two in Wednes- of the whole. Every one must see by these facts how absurd it is to talk about the vast saving of labor in writing and type-setting that may be made by the suppression of silent letters in our orthography. WE of America are prone to boast of the big shops of our cities. It is undoubtedly true that trade is housed in more stately structures in American cities than elsewhere. New York has not only the biggest dry-goods establishment in the world, but it has the second and probably the third biggest, the Bon Marché of Paris being the only shoppingmart abroad that at all equals even our second or third establishments for the sale of fabrics. We have by far the largest jewelers' and the largest clothiers' establishments; there is generally, indeed, in nearly all the trades, a much more notable concentration here than abroad. The question is, whether this is altogether desirable. There are doubtless advantages, but are there not also some disadvantages? It can scarcely be considered a slight matter that the interest and variety of our streets would be much greater with a multitude of pretty small shops than with one or two vast bazaars; for whatever adds to the attractiveness of a city is worthy of consideration. One of the most charming spots in Paris is the Palais Royal, where there are almost miles of covered galleries and arcades lined with innumerable small shops, a great proportion of which are devoted to the display of jewelry and ceramic ware. We doubt whether the entire stock of these almost endless little bijou places would exceed that gathered in Tiffany's one grand palace of jewels; but the long, brilliant, and crowded arcades of the Palais Royal, with their succession of exquisitely-arranged shop-windows, afford a much more animated and attractive picture. A similar contrast may be made with London. It is probable that the trade of four or five of our great New York houses will amount in the aggregate to nearly all the transactions of Regent Street; and yet how much more brilliant and fascinating is the succession of elegant shops in this street than the dreary, white waste of Stewart's or Arnold, Constable & Co.'s! It would appear that the very metropolitan vastness of our establishments detract from the metropolitan gayety of our streets. By being too big and concentrated, they lose for us the sense of bigness that comes of the long array of many shops. Stewart does enough business in his one great house, if it were divided up, to occupy all the many vacant stores now on Broadway, and, thus diffused, would rescue this once-brilliant street from the gloom that has come over it. Of course, there is no such thing now as arresting this concentration, even if it were desirable to do so; and the convenience and economy of our system excuse a multitude of defects such as we have pointed out. Our only purpose in showing the objectionable side of the system is, that those who, like Dr. Johnson, feel so much pride in stately shops, may realize what they lose-may see how much more gay and Parisian-like our business-streets would be if we did not have these plethoric monsters in our midst. WE are more than ever impressed, after a recent trip to Saratoga, with the fact that Americans need not go abroad to find watering-places replete with every thing that the luxurious may crave, the lover of comfort seek for, and the invalid tempting health with tonic waters and cheerful sights may desire for recuperation. Any country on the globe may be safely defied to produce the match of Saratoga. The gayety of Scarborough and Torquay, of Trouville and Biarritz, of Baden and Ems and Monaco, is tame beside it. Saratoga has been much abused by literary cynics and one-sided moralists, and no doubt has its vices and imperfections, or it would be paradise. But it has fewer vices and more attractions than any watering-place beyond the Atlantic. There is certainly less dissipation of the worse sort, less affectation and assumption of caste, less rigidity of etiquette and fashionable rule, more scope for the greatest enjoyment of the greatest number. The charm of Saratoga, indeed, lies in its essential democracy, the free mingling of all classes of people who behave themselves, and the nicety to which it gratifies every taste. Luxury, surely, was never carried to a more lavish height; yet it is not the luxury of the nabob of Ems or Homburg, who holds himself apart, has his special immunities, and upon whom the tradespeople and population wait to the exclusion of lesser mankind. In another respect Saratoga is very notably superior to the European spas. America is often represented as a nation of rowdies. "Scratch a civilized and polished American," say some of our foreign critics, "and you will find a rough." But one who is a looker-on at our famous spa notices nothing more quickly than the order which prevails amid the hubbub of fashionable gayety. Every thing goes off well. The criticising Englishman will look almost in vain for the men with the loud haw-haw and tobacco-spitting propensities whom he has been taught to regard as typical of the race. Saratoga is fashionable; and it has many fashions which we are fain to heartily like. It is fashionable there to be gentlemanly and ladylike, and so powerful is the example of this fashion, that even the boors and gossips that drift thitherward are toned down into something not unlike orderly manners. Our own experience, too, is terms of gratitude of the kindness, patience, skill, and tenderness of some physician who had ministered to them;" but, while this is undoubtedly true, yet many of our physicians have a reputation for great recklessness in their dealings with their patients, and it is this class that Mr. Webster arraigns so forcibly. In the special cases that he cites we have conclusive reasons for believing his al that those who, above and below, have the office of serving the guests of the spa, are obliging and always ready to oblige. Mr. Howells's distressingly "gentlemanly clerk," if not extinct, is certainly rare at Saratoga. Why, then, should Americans seek distraction, with the long and uneasy Atlantic journey, at inferior summer resorts abroad? There is only one tolerably valid reason— that our own watering-places are so expen-legations to be true, and if our correspondsive, that the transatlantic trip can be taken as cheaply as a sojourn can be made at one of them. This is the most glaring defect of Saratoga; prices are out of all reason. People should not be compelled to pay double price for every thing, from a bath to an Indian gewgaw, and it is to be hoped that a reform will be made ere long in this direction. ents knew the facts as we know them they would cease accusing the author of the article in question of ignorance, however much they might censure his generalizations as being too broad and sweeping. THE French prime-minister has enjoined THE upon his official subordinates to be more careful and legible in their handwriting; and there are few official regions in the world where the same injunction would not be useful. Gentlemen in public life are too apt to write wretched scrawls, there being a saying afloat that great men, as a rule, are bad penmen. Silence, however, no more implies Ju We have already printed one reply to the article which appeared in the JOURNAL of July 17th, entitled "Mismanagement by Physicians," and hence must be excused from giving space to a very long communication on the subject from another physician. We are quite justified in this refusal inasmuch as the response is merely one of argument, and does not attempt to disprove the special facts set down in Mr. Webster's article. We are quite willing to concede that some of Mr. Webster's conclusions were too sweeping; he should have discriminated better between the reckless and the conscientious members of the profession. It is no doubt true, as our correspondent declares, that there are many persons "who speak in the strongest Literary. THE "Bric-a-Brac Series" seems destined to illustrate anew how few really good stories, or jokes, or anecdotes there are current at any one time, how incessantly these few are reappearing in new phraseology and applied to new persons, and how trivial is the small-talk with which even men of genius and genuine wit seem to entertain their intimates. One would have supposed that, with the vast literature of reminiscence, au tobiography, and personal gossip to draw upon, Mr. Stoddard might go on collecting bric-a-brac to an indefinite extent; but his last two or three volumes prove distinctly that he is reaching the end of his materials, or that he has exhausted the patience necessary for their proper selection. The eighth volume, just published (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.), contains reminiscences by John O'Keefe, a popular dramatist, who lived from 1747 to 1833; Michael Kelly, a musical composer and singer, who flourished from 1762 to 1825; and John Taylor, a journalist, whose career extended over about the same period. The reminiscences are chiefly of dramatists, actors, and actresses, and others more or less closely connected with the stage; and, after reading them with due diligence, we are inclined to agree with Mr. Stoddard that, though they contain good things, they are, on the whole, dull and tedious. A few of the best things in the volume we shall venture to quote, though we are aware that in doing so, even to a limited extent, we run the risk of leaving nothing which the reader will think it worth his while to discover for himself. To begin with, here is an anecdote of Congreve, which we do not remember to have seen before, and which; even if not new, is good enough to bear repetition : "Speaking of persons addressing an audience in their own character, dramatic tradition gives the following circumstance relative to Congreve: On the first night of the representation of his last play, The Way of the World,' the audience hissed it violently; the clamor was loud, and originated in a party, for Congreve was a statesman and a placeman. He was standing at the side of the stage, and when the uproar of hisses and opposition was at its height, he walked on (the first and last time this poet ever stood before an audience), |