do--by
giving the highest possible value to all our resources and
products. Having reaped the full advantage of the investment,
which has increased our means more than five-fold, we were never in
a better position to commence its return. The securities are still
very low; on an average from ten to fifty per cent below what they
were originally sold for. To this discount is to be added something
over twenty per cent in the present price of exchange. We are
getting back our securities at about one half what we parted with
them for. As money is plenty, the foreigner paying the premium on
gold, we are certainly driving a very good bargain. We can, without
the least inconvenience, part with one hundred million dollars in
specie, which is lying idle in the vaults of our banks and the
hands of our people, and get back nearly twice the amount of
interest-paying securities, which is equivalent to the payment of a
debt too, and stopping the interest on an equal amount, assuming
securities of this country to a similar amount were held abroad,
which is an excessive estimate, the aggregate not probably
exceeding one hundred million dollars.'

* * * * *

We have heard of a German, who having been strung up in jest and cut
down, declared it was 'a fery pad choke.' The best 'choke' of the season
was issued by our friend the _Boston Traveller_, who in commenting on
the remark of the London _Times_, to the effect that Mr. Lincoln is
eating his artichoke, the South, leaf by leaf, but thinks it will not
agree with him, said: 'It will not trouble him a thousandth part so much
as Jeff Davis will be troubled when he shall, by and by, take _his_
'heartychoke with caper sauce.''

* * * * *

HON ROBERT J. WALKER knows the South well, and he has of late written
well on it and on the present state and future prospects of our country.
Those who have read Mr. Atkinson's instructive pamphlet upon 'Cheap
Cotton,' will be interested in the strong confirmation of his arguments
given by Hon. Robert J. Walker, late of Mississippi, in the following
statement contained in one of his recent letters:

'From long residence in the South, and from having traversed every
Southern State, I know it to be true that cotton is raised there
most extensively and profitably by non-slaveholders, and up