Editors Drawer.

It was an idea of the gifted author of "Ship and Shore," the late Walter Colton, chaplain in the United States' Navy, who had witnessed many burials at sea in his various voyages, that a body thus buried remained suspended in a medium so dense that it was alike beyond the reach of decay, or destruction by the "innumerable creeping things, both small and great beasts," which inhabit the mighty deep. This theory gives an added interest to the following beautiful passage from a discourse by the Rev. Mr. Giles: "The Sea is the largest of all cemeteries, and its slumberers sleep without a monument. All other grave-yards, in all other lands, show some symbol of distinction between the great and the small, the rich and the poor: but in that ocean-cemetery the king and the clown, the prince and the peasant, are alike undistinguished. The same waves roll over all; the same requiem by the minstrelsy of the ocean is sung to their honor. Over their remains the same storm beats and the same sun shines; and there, unmarbled, the weak and the powerful, the plumed and the unhonored, will sleep on until awakened by the same trump when the sea shall 'give up its dead!'"

Few things were more characteristic of the colored servants living with the old families of the North many years ago, than their high-flown language, and the deference which they endeavored to exact from those of their race whom they thought below themselves in a dependent position, and even of the whites whose social scale was beneath that of their own especial masters. A friend mentioned to us recently an amusing illustration of this: Some years ago, "Eben," as he was called, a colored servant of Mr. A——, an old and opulent citizen of a flourishing and beautiful city in Connecticut, obtained leave to use his master's sleigh and horses, to take his sable inamorata "a-sleighing" to a neighboring road-side inn, a popular resort, at certain seasons, even for the élite of the town whence it derived its principal support. About nine o'clock "Eben" drove up, and throwing the reins to the stable-boy, in the most stately manner, he helped out "Miss Dinah" with an air that would have befitted a colored Count D'Orsay, and the pair made their way to the principal sitting-room, where a bright and cheerful fire was blazing up the wide-backed chimney. Here, having seated his "lady" in state, he rang a little hand-bell on the table. The landlord entered. "Is dis you' best room, landlord?" "Yes," replied the landlord, "yes—doesn't it suit you?" "W'y, yes, sà, it suit if dere ain't no better, sà. We want some fresh'ents—best you got; sumfin nice—quick: an' look a' hea: gib my hosses couple tub o' oats, two ton o' hay, and two bushel o' water! An', we don't want no odder company, sà, in our 'partment: don't let in no colored pussons, sà." The landlord, who had known the old servant before he had gone to live with Mr. A—— (a fact which he did not know, or had forgotten), said, "Eben, where do you live now?" "Mr. A—— lib wid me, down on de Plain," said "Eben," speaking very quickly; "but I t'ank you, sà, w'en you speak to me, to call me by both my names: I got two names, sà." "Ah?—well, Eben, what is your other name?" "My middle name is 'Nezer, sà, and I'd t'ank you to recollect 'im!" "Poor, faithful, simple-hearted 'Eben!'" said the friend who mentioned this incident to us, he has followed 'Uncle Ned,' and 'gone where the good niggers go;' but he will long be remembered by all who ever knew him. He it was who, on one occasion, when about to take a letter to a certain quarter of the city, and when asked if he knew where the house was, replied, "I wish I had as many dollars as I know where dat house is!" The sum was not computable by any rule known to arithmetic, mathematics, or any cognate "science of numbers." On another occasion he was describing an execution of a colored man, which he had been to see. "When he went upon the platform," said he, "he was extremely overcome, and I thought, at one time, dat he wouldn't survive!" The probability is, that he didn't long!

One of "Nature's true Nobility," an educated, independent farmer in the country, after walking over his rich paternal acres, amidst his "fields ripe for the harvest," and his noble flocks and herds, sits down and writes the following passage in a letter to a gentleman of this city: "The scene has changed on the farm since I wrote you last. Blades and blossoms have turned to ears and fruit; spring to summer; seed-time to harvest. The birds have changed their notes, and seem to sing as if from a sense of duty only. The trees, instead of being fresh and green, are only shady. Brooks seem to be growing tired, and gardens no longer conceal their faded flowers. The noon of the year is at hand. Even now we feel its sultry heat; we are dazzled by its golden light. Reapers will soon go out to gather the ripened grain. Store-houses and barns will soon be filled again with the bounties of God. Is it not a pleasant season, a profitable halting-time; a point of prospect, from which we may look backward and forward? Has it no analogy to the Present of our own lives—yours, and mine, and ——'s? Does it not bid us look to our harvests, that we may gather in season, and be furnished for the long winter which approacheth? Gather, I mean, in those great moral fields which God has opened around us, and filled with incorruptible fruits: knowing that they, too, have their appropriate seasons, and that as to them, also the harvest will soon pass, the summer will soon end? Let us keep in mind, then, dear ——, the great truth, that,

"Loitering slow the Future creepeth, Arrow-swift the Present sweepeth, And motionless forever stands the Past!"

"'I had been out a-fishing in the 'Old South Bay,'" said a Long Island subscriber the other day, "with one of those crafty fishermen to whom no days, on which the water may be tempted, are considered days for 'bad luck;' 'dies infaustus' being a term unknown in his calendar. He was one of those 'long-necked clam'-eaters, whose stomach rose and fell with the tides which made them plentiful or left them scarce. As we were coming in in our boat, after a successful foray upon bass and sheepshead, we 'fell to meditate' upon various matters which were neither piscatory nor akin to it. As Boswell would say of the colloquies of the Great Leviathan: 'We spoke of Ghosts.' 'You say ghosts have been seen on Long Island, but you never seen 'em, and don't believe in 'em!' 'Wal, yes, I can't say I do believe in 'em, but I guess I should believe in 'em, ef I had such luck in gettin' a sight on 'em as a man did down to Jerusalem-South a good many years ago. The way of it was this: You see, it was a dreadful cold winter's night, about nine o'clock (how the Old South Bay roared that night)! when there was a sleigh with three fellows into it, druv up under the hoss-shed at the tavern. Two on 'em got out; and as they got out, they said to 't'other one, 'Jim, jist you sit there and mind the hosses while we go in and git somethin' warmin': we'll be right out agin.' They went into the tavern, but they didn't 'come right out again' by a jug-full, though when they did come out they had more than a jug-full apiece into 'em—both on 'em had—ha! ha! 'Fore they come out, though, Bill the 'ostler said to the man sittin' in the sleigh, 'Ef I was you I wouldn't sit there in the cold as long as you're a-sittin', blamed if I would: why don't you go in and get somethin' too?" The man never said nothin', though, in answer, but sot up as straight as an Indian. Bill, who was lookin' after some other hosses under the same shed, a'ter a while said somethin' more to him, but he was as still as a 'yster. Pooty soon Bill said to hisself, 'Goy-blamed ef I don't think he's friz to death, or else he'd say somethin'!' So he went up to him and shook him; and sure enough, he found him fruz as stiff as a stake; and when he come to hold up his lantern to look, he found him propped up on each side on the seat; the lines was wound round his hands; he was muffled up with comforters about his face—and he was stone-dead!

"'Bill wasn't nobody's fool, ef he did attend to hosses. He smelt the whole thing out to-once. Two or three graves had been robbed about there only a little while before, and the two chaps in the tavern was two body-gatherers that had been paid by doctors to get bodies for 'em, for to cut up, and they'd been and robbed a new grave that night; and here was the corpse, wrapped up and propped up in that sleigh, so that folks wouldn't suspicion nothing about it! Now what d'you 'spose Bill does? He goes and takes, Bill does, that body out of the sleigh (for he wasn't afraid of the very devil), strips off the clothes, and puts it into the oat-bin inside, and fastens the door: then he puts on the dead man's clothes hisself, and he goes and gets into the sleigh with 'em onto him, puts the lines round his hands, props hisself up, and waits for the body-snatchers to come out from the bar-room. Pooty soon, out they come, got in on the wide seat along side of him, and druv off. There Bill sits, as stiff as a rail; but 'twasn't long 'fore one o' the chaps says to t'other, feelin o' Bill's leg a little, 'Why, the body's gettin' warm! Feel o' that leg!' T'other one put down his hand and felt o' Bill's legs; and then he started back and said: 'It's a fact, by Thunder! it is warm, and no mistake!' 'Twas Bill's time, now: so he turned his head round, stiff-like and straight, without moving his body, and says he, 'Warm?—wal, I guess you'd be WARM ef you'd been took out o' h-ll only a little while ago, as I was!'

"'Bill says it wan't half a second 'fore both o' them chaps had pitched head-first out o' that sleigh, and n'ither on 'em stopped runnin' till they was clean out o' sight. Then he turned right square round and druv back to the tavern. There he told the whole story; and he made a good spec. out o' the thing too, in the end; for you see, the friends of the man that was dug up guv him fifty dollars for savin' of the body, and as nobody ever come back a'ter the sleigh and hosses, he sold 'em to Captain B——, down on H—— Plains, for nigh upon three hundred dollars! 'Twas a fust-rate team—so they said. That's the most profitable and about the only ghost that ever I heerd tell on! Good many folks talks about seein' 'em, but I expect they never did—not r'ally.'"

It was not an uncommon thing in England, before the abuse was corrected by an especial act of Parliament, for interested parties to secure the incarceration, in private asylums for lunatics, of those who, from pecuniary or other considerations, they were desirous of "getting out of the way, and keeping out of the way:" but in this country the difficulty attending such transactions rendered them infrequent of execution. Yet as late as in October, 1847, a learned clergyman of the Church of England, of unique mind, and in his manners not a copyist of others, was imprisoned in a lunatic asylum not three hundred miles from New York, on the alleged ground that he was "crazy." The truth was soon discovered, however, and he was liberated; but the result arose from a mere accident. The victim had asked permission, on a Sunday, to attend church. The request was refused. A second demand to the same effect was met with: "If you ask to go to church again, we shall confine you to the 'second floor'"—a hall with cells and grated windows, and seldom entered by visitors. Whereupon the incarcerated clergyman, who had not been prohibited from having writing materials, sent to the overseer of the institution the following lines:

"Go on, go on! your prison den No terrors has for me: God is my shield! why fear I then A moment's tyranny? "Vain man may bind his fellow clay, Incarcerate the wise, Dungeons shut out the cheerful day, And darkness shroud my eyes: "Go on, go on! free Fancy smiles, And soars on golden wings, The Spirit spurns your petty wiles— The Muse, unfettered, sings! "Bring on, bring here your threats and chains, Imagination bind! Bring grates, bring all your iron panes— Cage in the steadfast mind! "Your power is faint, your threatenings naught, What empire have ye now? This poor, frail body—not one thought— Shall to your thralldom bow. "Sure is that day not distant far, When Truth shall claim her son, Offended Justice wake the war, And speak in thunder-tone: "How did ye dare, on Mercy's plea, Abuse her sacred name, Till violated Liberty Bring in her sternest claim. "Now Justice reign, bereft of sight, For mortal woes and fears; In Freedom's cause uphold the Right! Back, back, ye struggling tears!"

These lines seemed to create an impression, in the minds of those who saw them, that there was at least some "method" in the writer's "madness," and the requisite inquisition soon put an end to his incarceration. He is now, as he was then, a learned and accomplished divine, and is at present preaching to a large and flourishing congregation in a sister city.

We have heard much of the sagacity of the elephant; of those qualities which Dugald Stewart places far above mere instinct (namely, memory and forecaste), which he possesses; but we never knew until lately, that an elephant had an "ear for music!" But it appears that there was at Mayence, in 1811, an elephant who was a great lover of sweet sounds. The musicians of the city treated him with a concert of instrumental music, which had a very powerful effect upon him. He expressed his delight by frequently flapping his great leather-apron ears, and rolling from side to side. A solo upon a horn almost transported him. He "put himself in motion," beat time with his trunk, and expressed his approval of the performance by the distinct but subdued emission of vocal applause. Think of an elephant applauding at the opera, or one of Jenny Lind's concerts!

It will have been observed, by those who have read the recent speeches of a celebrated American orator and statesman, with what beautiful simplicity and force brief passages or phrases from the Bible come in aid of his eloquence. And well would it be if these qualities were studied more by our public speakers from that good "Book of books." Sir William Jones expressed his opinion that the Bible contained "more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence and poetry, than could be collected from all other books, in whatever language or age they might have been written." Fisher Ames and Patrick Henry, pre-eminent American orators, did not hesitate to go further, and declare, that "no man ever did or ever could become truly eloquent, without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language."

If the following amusing circumstance had been narrated in the pages of the veracious historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, it would have been set down to the credit of a fertile fancy on the part of that illustrious historian, rather than believed as a fact. But the occurrence here detailed is a veritable one, and happened many years ago in the county of York, Pennsylvania. It is a forcible illustration of that undoubted and undoubting Dutch honesty which made New Amsterdam so famous in the olden time.

It seems, from the record, that there were two early German settlers, in the western part of the county, whose names were Peter —— and John ——. Peter had increased the size of his farm, by annexing to it a small tract of land adjoining, and he lacked about a hundred dollars of the sum which it was necessary to pay for his new acquisition. He called upon his neighbor John, to borrow the amount. John consented at once, and going into another room, he brought out an old bread-basket, and counted down the desired number of dollars; and then the two sat down to two large earthen mugs of cider and as many pipes of tobacco. After smoking over the matter for a while, it occurred to Peter that in similar transactions he had seen or heard something like a note passing between the borrower and lender, and he suggested as much to John. The lender assented to the propriety of such a course; paper, pen, and ink, were produced; and between the two a document was concocted, stating that John had loaned Peter one hundred dollars, which Peter would repay to John in "tree mont's." This Peter signed; and thus far the two financiers made the thing "all regular, and ship-shape."

But at this point a difficulty presented itself. They both knew that notes were made in the operation of borrowing and lending, which they had witnessed; but neither of them had observed what disposition was made of the document: neither could tell whether it was for the borrower or the lender to take charge of the paper. Here was a dilemma! At last a bright idea struck John: "You haves de money to pay, Peter, so you must take dis paper, so as you can see as you haf to pay it." This was conclusive: the common sense of the thing was unanswerable; and Peter pocketed the money and his own note, so "as he could see as he haf to pay it!"

Three months passed over; and punctually to the day appeared Peter, and paid over the promised sum to John. This being done, the mugs and pipes were again brought out. After puffing awhile, Peter produced the note, and handed it to John, with the remark: "Now, John, you must take de note, so as you can see the money haf been paid!"

It strikes us that this incident is only second to the "balancing of the books" by weighing, passing receipts, and mulcting the constable in the amount of costs, as recorded by the sage historian of Manahatta.

We believe it is a German poet who, walking "silent and thoughtful by the solemn shore of the vast ocean we must sail so soon," thus speaks "The Ship of Death:"

"By the shore of Time, now lying On the inky flood beneath, Patiently, thou Soul undying! Waits for thee the Ship of Death! "He who on that vessel starteth, Sailing from the sons of men, To the friends from whom he parteth Never more returns again! "From her mast no flag is flying, To denote from whence she came; She is known unto the dying— Azael is her captain's name. "Not a word was ever spoken, On that dark, unfathom'd sea; Silence there is so unbroken, She herself seems not to be! "Silent thus, in darkness lonely, Doth the Soul put forth alone, While the wings of angels only Waft her to a Land Unknown."

How many are departing daily in that "Ship of Death!" "Good Heaven!" exclaims one, "how often are we to die before we go off this stage! In every friend we lose, we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. God keep those we have left!"

The following ludicrous occurrence finds its way into the "Drawer," on a blank-leaf of a business-letter, from a flourishing town in Illinois: "A manufacturer of tombstones, in our place, lately received a call from a countryman, who wanted a stone to place over the grave of his mother. After looking around for some time, and making sundry remarks about the taste of his deceased mother, he finally pitched upon one which the stone-cutter had prepared for another person. 'I like this one,' said he. 'But,' said the manufacturer, 'that belongs to another man, and has Mrs. Perry's name cut on it: it wouldn't do for your mother.' 'O, yes, it would,' said the countryman, 'she couldn't read! And besides,' he continued, as he observed the wonderment of the stone-cutter, 'Perry was always a favorite name of hers, any how!'" This anecdote reminds us of a kindred occurrence, which actually took place in this good city of Gotham. A parvenu, who had set up his carriage in great state, went to a harness-maker to have "a silver letter" put on the blinders of his horses. "What letter shall I put on?" asked the harness-maker. "Well, I don't know, exactly," answered the pompous "patron;" but, after hesitating a moment, he said, "Well; I guess W is about as handsome a letter as you can put on—isn't it?"

In the "marriage of language to music and feeling," as the great German, Goethe, expresses it, Alfred Tennyson has but few equals, and probably no superior at the present day. A modern English critic, in a review of his Princess, observes: Mr. Tennyson is not, we believe, a connoisseur in music, as Moore was; yet look at the songs in 'The Princess.' Take the 'Bugle Song,' for example, unequaled in our language, except by Shakspeare:

'The splendor falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory: Blow, bugle, blow—set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying! 'O hark! O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow! let us hear the purple glens replying Blow, bugle! answer echoes, dying, dying, dying! 'O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill, on field, on river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever: Blow, bugle! blow; set the wild echoes flying, And answer echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying!'

"True," says the reviewer, "this is an imitation, in words, of the actual sounds of bugle-music; but it had been little to let us hear, in the wonderful combination of liquid, ringing consonants, and resounding vowels, the 'horns of Elfland faintly blowing,' had not the poet told us in the same key of sound, how

'The splendor falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story:'

investing with one uniting halo, first the scenery, then the music itself, and lastly the human thoughts and feelings which remind him that

'Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever:'

embodying, in the oneness of the sensuous framework, the spiritual harmony of the whole inward and outward impression, the luscious languor, the stately splendor, the thoughts which follow into infinity the dying echoes of the air." This is true criticism, and is confirmatory of an impression which we have long entertained, that it requires something more than laborious pains-taking, something different, and better, than a mere careful selection of melodious or sounding words, and a felicitous collocation of them, to give a man a poetical reputation that is worth possessing.

The western lawyers, who "hire out their words and anger," are somewhat amenable to the charge brought against them by transatlantic writers, of looseness and bombast in their arguments and oratory. In a recent case of capital crime, before a far-western jury, the lawyer addressed to them, among other similar arguments, the following: "The Bible says, 'Thou shalt not kill!' Now do you know, gentlemen, that if you go to hang my client, the prisoner at the bar, that you commit murder? You do, and 'no mistake;' for murder is murder, whether it is committed by twelve men in what is called a box—and a 'bad box' you'll find it if you don't give a righteous verdict—or a humble individual, like my client. S'posing my client had killed a man; I say, s'posing he had; is that any reason why you should kill a man?—twelve of you on one! No, gentlemen of the jury, you may bring the prisoner at the bar, my client, in guilty; the hangman may do his duty, but will that exonerate you? No such thing! You will all, individually and collectively, you will all of you be murderers!" This profound argument had its effect. The verdict of the jury was: "Not guilty if he'll quit the State!"

Our neighbors across the water indulge themselves in occasional comments upon the personal ostentation and desire for external display, which they regard as the besetting folly of our people. There is an old adage of "Look at home," which it seems to us it would not be amiss for "honest John" to bear in mind. One of his own writers recently said, "An Englishman will forego a horse and cabriolet that will serve to convey him comfortably to his friends, and give him air, pleasure, and variety, if he can not do it in an expensive style and manner, mounting a lackey behind, bedaubed with gold lace. Pride, purse-pride, is the besetting sin of England; and like most other sins, brings its own punishment, by converting existence into a struggle, and environing it with gloom and despondency." This is a criticism, be it understood, of an Englishman upon Englishmen, in the present state of English society. Now to show how it was aforetime, and that what Bull charges us with, is a besetting sin and folly of his own, hear the quaint Thomas Nashe, who wrote in 1593:

"Englaund, the players' stage of gorgeous attyre, the ape of all nations' superfluities, the continuall masquer in outlandish habilements, great plenty-scanting calamities art thou to await, for wanton disguising thyself against kind, and digressing from the plainnesse of thine Auncesters; scandalous and shamefull is it, that not anie in thee (Fishermen and husbandmen set aside) but lyve above their ability and birth; that the outward habite (which in other countries is the only distinction of honour), shoulde yeelde in thee no difference of persons: that all thy auncient Nobilitie, (almost,) with this gorgeous prodigalitie, should be devoured and eaten uppe, and up-starts inhabite their stately Pallaces, who from farre have fetcht in this vanitie of pride to entrappe and to spoyle them. Those of thy people that in all other things are miserable, on their apparaile will be prodigal. No Lande can so unfallibly experience this proverbe, The hoode makes not the Moncke as thou: for Tailers, serving-men, Make-shifts, and Gentlemen in thee are confounded. For the compassment of bravery we hear theye will robbe, steale, cozen, cheate, betray their owne Fathers, sweare and forsweare, or doe any thing. Take away braverie, you kill the hart of lust and incontinencie. Wherefore doe men make themselves brave, but to riot and to revell? Looke after what state theyr apparaile is, that state they take to them and carry, and after a little accustoming to that carriage, persuade themselves they are such indeede."

There is that in the following brief social homily which renders it worthy of a better preservation than an inscription upon an unappropriated slip of paper in the "Drawer:" "There is no better evidence of ill-breeding than the practice of interrupting another in conversation while speaking, or commencing a remark before another has fully closed. No well-bred person ever does it, nor continues conversation long with a person who does do it. The latter often finds an interesting conversation abruptly waived, closed, or declined by the former, without even suspecting the cause. A well-bred person will not even interrupt one who is in all respects greatly his inferior. If you wish to judge the good-breeding of a person with whom you are but little acquainted, observe him, or her, strictly in this respect, and you will not be deceived. However intelligent, fluent, or easy one may appear, this practice proves the absence of true politeness. It is often amusing to see persons, priding themselves on the gentility of their manners, and putting forth all their efforts to appear to advantage in many other respects, so readily betray all in this particular."