flies who have been indulging in the
dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.

Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects
himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our
fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his
hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting
movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right
yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let
us settle that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good
trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap,
and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself. Poor
fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. If he
could read the letters at the head of the sheet, he would see they were
Fly-Paper.--So with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to think we
dream! Perhaps very young persons may not understand this; as we grow
older, our waking and dreaming life run more and more into each other.

Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of
old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be
had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must
go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner
nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand
on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine
right of its telegraphic dispatches.

War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of
Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the
Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll,
which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, about that
time growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from the
neighboring heights at all hours,--in token of which see the tower of
Brattle Street Church at this very day? War in her memory means '76. As
for the brush of 1812, "we did not think much about that"; and everybody
knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much, except in its
political relations. No! war is a new thing to all of us who are not in
the last quarter of their century. We are learning many strange matters
from our fresh experience. And besides, there are new conditions of
existence which make war as