was prevalent, nobody would call me a dyspeptic or a croaker on that account. No more do I merit any hard name when I call attention to a moral epidemic, which any one who is not stone blind can see is active, far and wide, putting Shysters where men should be found.

Indeed, so subtle and penetrating are these ethic zooids, that it is by no means easy to find men who are not possessed by a morbid hankering to figure as Shysters. Shyster! Shy of what? The true or the false? You may know a genuine man readily; he goes straight up to the true, and never shies at the false. The Shyster is of a contrary nature: whether he is dealing with truth or falsehood, he is forever contriving some trick by which he may get the better of his interlocutor. He is shy to trust his own strength and rectitude. And if in the meshes of his cunning he chances to catch an intimation of the fact that Shysters in the end are the dupes of their own cleverness, he only chuckles, and sets about taking a Shyster's advantage of his discovery. What an astounding Shyster was Napoleon! And the world is full of pigmy Napoleons. Perhaps the Roman haruspices could not look each other in the face without laughing; but now-a-days we have learned a sort of smirking self-control. Still, no Shyster can mimic a good man's face, to the deception of a practiced eye. As a fire-fly to the sun, so is a Shyster to one who is more solicitous to be right than to be recognized.

Shysters are the fungus growth that hide, at once, and proclaim, the feebleness of a decaying organization. They are very beautiful too, many of these Polonius-like confervoids-under the microscope; but in a wise economy, no provision is made for their culture. And whenever it is found that the Shysters have crowded out the truebolds, nothing remains but to burn the whole fabric. So the Catholic Church goes to the flames, and the Protestant Church, and every order of dogmatism; for it is on the ruins of such that Shysters grow rank and pestilent. And the Government at Washingtonwho knows? Up, men and women of the nation, and scrape for your lives! or a worthier people will shortly build upon the ashes of the structure you let go to the mould.

It is not often that the moral histologist finds ready mounted for his microscope so fair a specimen of the Shyster vulgare, as that recently prepared by the Hicksite Quakers of this city, certainly the last people who should be expected to have anything to do with Shysters.

Let us begin at the Sporule:

About ten years ago, soon after the completion of the new Friends' Meeting House, in Brooklyn, the dozing congregation was startled one First day morning by a middle-aged Friend, known to all as an able, astute, tireless, conservative worker in the business affairs of the Society, rising from his layman's bench, and, in a few simple words full of pathos, and of great power, announcing that he had long struggled against a feeling that he was called upon to speak ministering words to the people, and that he should resist the divine call no longer. The impression made upon his hearers was

profound. It was as if the sluggish moral sentiment of the assemblage had been shocked, or, perhaps, exhilarated, into vital activity. The rotund Shysters—as they always do in the sudden blaze of any fresh moral illumination, witness the great uprising of the North-either shrivelled out of sight, or else gave themselves up to be borne on by the tide they could not resist. But soon it was found that the new preacher came preaching new doctrine-new for those benches. Speaking as a Friend to Friends, he went back of the Book of Discipline and the traditions of the gallery for his inspiration. He taught obedience to our highest impulses, reverence for the Creator, contempt for idols visible and invisible, dynamic love. Of course the Shysters began to shy. One day, instead of eking out his discourse with an orthodox allusion to Abraham, he pointed to the gallows on which John Brown had just been hung, and found here an edifying example of submission to the divine voice speaking in the heart. Here at length was a pretext. Striking an alliance with the old pro-slavery virus, the Shysters went to work. Now plausible, now threatening, with satanic activity, they went about undermining one who, they said, "had begun in the light, but had fallen from grace."

Let me make a passing commentary on the prevalent superstition of Friends concerning "immediate revelation." They hold that the duly commissioned servant of the Most High is merely a spout through which the Heavenly stream is supplied to thirsting souls; that the true preacher is always and simply a spout, never a reservoir; and all premeditation of a discourse, necessarily brings it down to the earth, earthy. Again and again, have I heard a broad-brimmed Shyster who was constantly in the habit of proclaiming this doctrine of immediate inspiration, declare, that "if John J. Merritt could only have gone on as he started in his first discourse, he would have been a great and shining light in the Society." Perhaps so; but how did he start? Just as an intelligent man about entering upon a novel and momentous work might be expected to start; cautiously, examining every point, weighing every word. I have seen the manuscripts of those "first discourses," written out and re-written, months before one of them was delivered. Yet the chief of the Shysters has proclaimed, over and over, that these were the discourses, acceptable to God and the Galleries, from the spirit of which Friend Merritt afterwards fell.

Whether the subject of the newly awakened hostility of the Shyster-benches met their insidious and wanton attacks with perfect grace and temper is a question which need not enter into our brief glance at the Shyster vulgare. If it is true, as some have said, that he began right and fell afterwards, then so much the more hateful is the Shyster-brood which was potent to work his fall. At any rate, a monogram detailing the progress of the "John J. Merritt case " for the eight years following the execution of John Brown, would be of immense service to the student of the Natural History of Shysters. Every naturalist knows the richness of certain kinds of stagnant water in infusorial life; and

it will be found that no possible infusions of political or railroad matters can enter into comparison with the stagnant waters of an old religious organization for showing the finer varieties of those curious animalcules, or perhaps homuncules, known to science as the Shyster vulgare. In the instance to which I have referred, and of which I hope some day to see a detailed memoir, the powerful nature of the man whom these little creatures had singled out for their prey, his familiarity with their habits and practices, his readiness in scrutinizing the many phases which they put on with almost amœboid. facility, the masterly skill with which he countermined the plots which they laid for his destruction, have been of great service in bringing their more concealed characteristics and propensities clearly into view. The end is not yet. After years of agitation, the Shysters of the Elder growth succeeded in getting his case before the Monthly meeting, but the party discipline was imperfect and he was restored to good standing. After a time, he was again indicted; and this time, in true shyster fashion, without a word of investigation, in the face of solemn charges of corruption and partizan bias, made in open meeting by a Friend of unimpeachable standing, who, not three months before, had been an accredited representative of the Monthly meeting to the Quarterly meeting, and whose specific charges against the manner of the prosecution no one attempted to answer; this time by a bare majority, a shyster verdict was rendered, and John J. Merritt was declared disowned. He appealed to the Quarterly meeting, which appointed a committee. The committee met at once, heard the contesting parties, and adjourned-all in one day. Nothing farther was done. The Quarterly meeting met three months afterwards, but no report was made. Then presently, the appellant received notice to appear before the committee for a reopening of the case And what do you suppose was the time set by this cautious committee for commencing anew their important investigation? The evening before the next Quarterly meeting! Six months after the date of their appointment; and less than twentyfour hours before the time for them to present their report !-supposing they had any intention of reporting. And what do the Shysters gain by this delay? Why, the man they dread is kept out of Yearly meeting this year, and out of the Monthly meeting till after the Elders have secured, in August, their renomination for the following three years. Perhaps, too, they may succeed in working up a report sustaining the action of the Monthly meeting,—or perhaps they do not mean ever to report.

It will be seen by the terms I use that I am not certain whether the Shysters belong to the animal or the vegetable kingdom. Like animals they absorb oxygen and give off carbonic acid gas; and like plants they appropriate rapidly certain mineral substances, particularly gold and silver. I feel at liberty therefore to speak of them sometimes as animalcules and sometimes as confervoids.

BONCŒUR.

MARRIED.