Editor's Drawer.

Doubtless there are few men, who at all enjoy their own thoughts, or books, the printed thoughts of others, either of the past, or in the present, but have preserved in some form what impressed them favorably or interested them deeply. Some elaborate at night, after their hours of business are over, a daily record, or diary, in which are set down many of the "choice things" and all the "remarkable occurrences," to which the day may have given rise. Others—and they are not only wise but benevolent—do not selfishly shut up these things between the covers of a private manuscript-volume, but copy them off in a fair hand, and send them to the editor of some clever journal or magazine, where they are soon "known and read of all men"—and women. Now we have a collection of the kind to which we have alluded. When scribbled, they have been thrown into a drawer of the table whereon they were written. They are of all kinds and descriptions; of matters humorous and of matters pathetic: some have come warm from the heart—others come fresh from the fancy. Many things from the lips of others have been preserved, some of which drew tears from eyes unused to weep; while, on the other hand, and in respect of other things, the "water of mirth" has crept into the same eyes. Of such are the materials of our collection. There will be found in them no attempts at "fine writing;" for that is a thing as much beyond our inclination as our power. Simplicity, earnestness, a desire to put down plainly our own natural thoughts and meditations, and the brief, amusing, or instructive thoughts of others—these are the means and this the purpose of our "Editor's Drawer." Wherefore, reader, perpend the first "batch," and patiently await a second and a better.

How much there is in the power of a single felicitous word in poetry, toward making a perfect picture to the mind of the reader! It often invests an inanimate object with almost actual life, and makes the landscape a sentient thing. Here are a few lines that live in our memory—from Proctor, Barry Cornwall, if we do not mistake—which are eminently in illustration of this. The poet is sitting at night-fall upon a green meadow-bank, with his little daughter by his side, looking at the setting sun, and the twilight exhalations colored by its evening beams:

"——Here will we sit, The while the sun goes down the glowing west, And drink the balmy air Exhaling from the meadows; the nectarous breath Which Earth sends upward when her lord, the Sun, Kisses her cheek at parting."

There is action as well as vitality in this beautiful simile. Shakspeare paints similarly, when he says:

"How soft the moonlight sleeps upon yon bank!"

Now, suppose he had written "rests upon yon bank?" how tame, in comparison, would the word have been; and yet it would be equally "correct." What is it that gives to the following line from Campbell's "Battle of Hohenlinden" its almost terrific force, but a single word:

"Far flashed the red artillery!"

That little word of one syllable sets the distant horizon all a-glow with the bursting flames from the deep-mouthed ordnance. Wherefore, ye minor bardlings, look to your accessories.

It was impossible not to laugh when the following circumstance was mentioned the other day in our hearing: A lady, whose little child had by accident partaken of something which it was feared would inflame or distend its bowels, was awakened in the night by the bursting of a yeast-bottle, in an adjoining closet. "Husband!" she exclaimed "get up! get up! Betsey has exploded! I heard her explode this minute!"—and nothing short of lighting a candle, and going to the apartment where the little girl slept would convince her of the unreality of her ridiculous impression.

The memories of childhood, after a mature age has been attained, are more powerful than many people are aware of. And especially is this the case, in reference to the religious observances which first arrest the attention of children. Our annual anniversaries, which bring to the Great Metropolis so many ministers of different denominations, are fruitful examples of the strong memories of children in this respect. With the familiar faces of the clergymen who ministered before him in holy things in his boyhood, come back to the city denizen fresh memories of his early life in the country; the plain village-church, with its farmer-occupants; the "tiding-men," who used to pull his ears, and make him change his seat, when he was restive under the delays and restraints of the sanctuary. "Do you see that white-haired old gentleman?" said a friend to us in the crowded Tabernacle, at a late religious anniversary, pointing to a venerable clergyman, the personification of solemn dignity. He was our minister in the country nearly forty years ago, and he was called "old Mr. L——" then. How well I remember his baptizing my little sister!—and it seemed but a dream of time, afterward, when I saw him marry her to a young man who had won her heart; and in less than two years afterward he uncovered his white head at her grave, and endeavored to speak words of consolation to her bereaved friends. The last time I heard him in the country was at a conference-meeting, on a summer afternoon, at the little school-house; and well do I recollect how, as the late twilight drew on, and I was looking out upon the deepening green of the trees that surrounded the humble building, his voice trembled with emotion as he read the parting hymn:

'The day is past and gone, The evening shades appear; Oh, may we all remember well, The night of Death draws near! 'We lay our garments by, Upon our beds to rest; So Death will soon disrobe us all Of what we here possessed.'

"I should like," continued our friend, as we walked away after the services were over; "I should like to go home to die, when it shall please GOD to call me away, and have that good old man, the friend and director of my boyhood, speak a few words over my last remains."

It is a pleasant thing, once in a while, to encounter a man of imperturbable good-nature; and such a one it was, who recently, at one of our hotels, after pulling some dozen of times at his bell, which continued unanswered, all at once said to a friend who was in his apartment: "I wonder if it's because I keep pulling at that bell so, that they don't come up! I'm afraid it is, really. Perhaps they're offended at me!" Even such patience is better than loud grumbling in a tavern-hall, and vociferous "bully-ragging" of servants.

Somebody—and we know not whom, for it is an old faded yellow manuscript scrap in our drawer—thus rebukes an Englishman's aspiration to be "independent of foreigners:" A French cook dresses his dinner for him, and a Swiss valet dresses him for his dinner. He hands down his lady, decked with pearls that never grew in the shell of a British oyster, and her waving plume of ostrich-feathers certainly never formed the tail of a barn-door fowl. The viands of his table are from all countries of the world; his wines are from the banks of the Rhine and the Rhone. In his conservatory he regales his sight with the blossoms of South American flowers; in his smoking-room he gratifies his scent with the weed of North America. His favorite horse is of Arabian blood; his pet dog of the St. Bernard breed. His gallery is rich with pictures from the Flemish school, and statues from Greece. For his amusement he goes to hear Italian singers warble German music, followed by a French ballet. The ermine that decorates his judges was never before on a British animal. His very mind is not English in its attainments: it is a mere pic-nic of foreign contributions. His poetry and philosophy are from ancient Greece and Rome; his geometry from Alexandria; his arithmetic from Arabia, and his religion from Palestine. In his cradle, in his infancy, he rubbed his gums with coral from oriental oceans; and when he dies, he is buried in a coffin made from wood that grew on a foreign soil, and his monument will be sculptured in marble from the quarries of Carrara. A pretty sort of man this, to talk of being "independent of foreigners!"

Parodies, as a general thing, are rather indifferent reading. The "Rejected Addresses" and "Warrenniana," however, are brilliant exceptions to this remark. One of the most happy native exhibitions of this sort that we have seen, is a parody upon the Scottish song of "Jessie, the Flower of Dunblane," written by a distinguished jurist in Pennsylvania:

"Oh, shweet ish de lily mit its prown yellow plossom, Und so ish de meadow, all covered mit green; But noding's so sweet, nor yet sticks in my posom, Like sweet liddel Katy, vot lives on de plain: She's pashful as any—like her dere's not many; She's neider high-larnt, nor yet foolish, nor vain; Und he's a great villain, mitout any feelin', Dat vould hurt vonce my Kitty, vot lives on de plain."

In a story which we once heard related by an Englishman, there seemed to us so good an exemplification of one phase of human incredulity, overcome by superior cunning, that we could not resist the inclination to "make a note of it." A fat, burly English landlord was sitting one afternoon at the door of his inn, in a provincial town not a hundred miles from London, when a person entered the house, and after complimenting its cleanliness and snug appearance, ordered a good dinner and a bottle of wine. The dinner, when ready, was laid in an upper apartment, looking out upon a pleasant garden; and after it had been thoroughly discussed, and the wine sipped luxuriously to the bottom of the bottle, the satisfied guest sent for his host, and when he entered the room, thus addressed him: "You have a fine inn here, landlord—a very fine inn: every thing is particularly nice—in fact, what I call comfortable." The landlord expressed his gratification. "I shall have great pleasure," continued the guest, without noticing the interruption, "in recommending your house to my friends in town. There remains only one thing more to mention, landlord; and as the subject is one which I have reason to think will be as unpleasant to you as to myself, I will express it in a few words. I have not, at this moment, any money; but I will be here again in—" "No money!" exclaimed the landlord, in a voice husky with anger. "No Money!! then why did you come to the 'Hen-and-Chickens' and run up a bill that you can't pay? Get out of my house this instant! Go! walk!" "I expected this," replied the guest, rising; "I anticipated this treatment; nor can I much blame you, landlord, to tell you the truth, for you don't know me. Because you sometimes meet with deception, you think I am deceiving you; but I pledge you my honor that a fortnight from this day I will be with you again, and you will confess your self ashamed of your suspicions." "Bah! you're a swindler!" ejaculated Boniface; "this will be the last of you: take that!" and with a vigorous coup de pied, was "sped the parting guest." "You will live to regret this, landlord, I am sure; but I do not blame you, for you are ignorant of my character," was the meek reply to this gross indignity. Just two weeks from that day, this same ill-used gentleman (with a traveling friend), was, with many apologies and protestations, shown into the best room of the celebrated "Hen-and-Chickens" inn. The landlord's profuse apologies were accepted; he was forgiven; and even invited to dine with the two friends upon the best dinner, flanked by the very choicest wines which his house afforded. When all was finished, and while the landlord, who had become exceedingly mellow, was protesting that he should never be so suspicious of a "real gentleman" again, he was interrupted by his first guest with: "But, landlord, there is one thing which we ought, in justice to you, to mention. I do not happen to have, at this moment, a single penny; and, I grieve to say, that my companion, who is a good man, but in a worldly point of view, very poor, is not a whit better off. Under these unpleasant circumstances, it becomes, as it were, a necessity, to bid you a very good evening!" "'Done' twice! the 'Hen and Chickens' 'done' twice!—and both times exactly alike!" said the landlord, as he went down to set the swindle to the account of "Profit and Loss."

A forcible example of the necessity of observing accent and punctuation in reading, was afforded by the careless reader who gave the passage from the Bible, with the following pauses: "And the old man said unto his sons, 'Saddle me, the ass;' and they saddled him!"

The following specimen of sepulchral literature was copied literally from an old tombstone in Scotland:

"Here lies the body of Alexander Macpherson, Who was a very extraordinary person: He was two yards high in his stocking-feet, And kept his accoutrements clean and neat; He was slew At the battle of Waterloo: He was shot by a bullet Plumb through his gullet; It went in at his throat, And came out at the back of his coat."

There is something very ludicrous in the specimens of inanimate personation mentioned by Dickens in one of his sketches. One Vauxhall waiter in London bawls out to another: "I say; look out, Bill; there's a Brandy-and-water a-gettin' over the railing, and a Go-o'-gin-and-a-Muffin a-slinkin' out o' the back-gate! Stop 'em, Bill—stop 'em!"