y
father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."

This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked him
in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous
epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one
else escaped.

If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating,
some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find
in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard
of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the
little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read
the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing
in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly
with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he had
dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof
which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of
whom had known worse days than those which they were passing within its
friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I
heard after he disappeared from general observation.

That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all
that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations of
this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility. The "Voices of the
Night" had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still
in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes,
which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk
into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a
scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.

What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating
in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other
in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any
against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the
small litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use. His
attack on Willis very pr