mercy compared to this masterpiece of
devilish enginery.

Ingenuity is much better shown in contrivances for making our daily life
more comfortable. I was on the lookout for everything that promised to
be a convenience. I carried out two things which seemed to be new to the
Londoners: the Star Razor, which I have praised so freely, and still
find equal to all my commendations; and the mucilage pencil, which is a
very handy implement to keep on the writer's desk or table. I found a
contrivance for protecting the hand in drawing corks, which all who are
their own butlers will appreciate, and luminous match-boxes which really
shine brightly in the dark, and that after a year's usage; whereas one
professing to shine by night, which I bought in Boston, is only visible
by borrowed light. I wanted a very fine-grained hone, and inquired for
it at a hardware store, where they kept everything in their line of the
best quality. I brought away a very pretty but very small stone, for
which I paid a large price. The stone was from Arkansas, and I need not
have bought in London what would have been easily obtained at a dozen or
more stores in Boston. It was a renewal of my experience with the
seafoam biscuit. "Know thyself" and the things about thee, and "Take the
good the gods provide thee," if thou wilt only keep thine eyes open, are
two safe precepts.

Who is there of English descent among us that does not feel with Cowper,

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still"?

Our recently naturalized fellow-citizens, of a different blood and
different religion, must not suppose that we are going to forget our
inborn love for the mother to whom we owe our being. Protestant England
and Protestant America are coming nearer and nearer to each other every
year. The interchange of the two peoples is more and more frequent, and
there are many reasons why it is likely to continue increasing.

Hawthorne says in a letter to Longfellow, "Why don't you come over,
being now a man of leisure and with nothing to keep you in America? If I
were in your position, I think I should make my home on this side of the
water,--though always with an indefinite and never-to-be-executed
intention to go back and die in my native land. America is a good land
for young people, but not for those who are past their prime. ... A man
of individuality and refinement can certainly live far more comfortably
here--provided he has the means to live at all--than in