an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr.
Biglow would appear to be from some passages in his contribution for
the current month. I would not, indeed, hastily suspect him of covertly
glancing at myself in his somewhat caustick animadversions, albeit some
of the phrases he girds at are not entire strangers to my lips. I am a
more hearty admirer of the Puritans than seems now to be the fashion,
and believe, that, if they Hebraized a little too much in their speech,
they showed remarkable practical sagacity as statesmen and founders. But
such phenomena as Puritanism are the results rather of great religious
than merely social convulsions, and do not long survive them. So soon as
an earnest conviction has cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and
the best that can be done with it is to bury it. _Ite, missa est_. I
am inclined to agree with Mr. Biglow that we cannot settle the great
political questions which are now presenting themselves to the nation by
the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as to the wants and duties of the
Jews in their time, nor do I believe that an entire community with their
feelings and views would be practicable or even agreeable at the present
day. At the same time I could wish that their habit of subordinating
the actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, and this world to the
other were more common. They had found out, at least, the great military
secret that soul weighs more than body.--But I am suddenly called to a
sick-bed in the household of a valued parishioner.

With esteem and respect. Your ob't serv't HOMER WILBUR.

Once git a smell o' musk into a draw
An' it clings hold like precerdents in law:
Your gran'ma'am put it there,--when, goodness knows,--
To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es;
But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife,
(For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?)
An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread
O' the spare-chamber, slinks into the shed,
Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides
To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides;
But better days stick fast in heart an' husk,
An' all you keep in't gits a scent o' musk.

Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read
Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head,
So's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers
With furrin countries or played-out ideers,
Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack
O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back:
This makes 'em talk o' daisie