is nothing but a benevolent blanket to be wrapped round
it. And if any one thread--videlicet I--should claim to have any
separate existence or any little tender feeling by itself, immediately
the manager of the Great Sanitary Fair says, "Hush! lie down! you are
nothing but a part of the blanket." But a truce to nonsense. Since
writing the foregoing, the news has come from Atlanta. Oh! if Grant
could do the same thing to Lee's army, not only would the Rebellion be
broken, but the Copperhead party would be scattered to the winds! Do
you read anything this summer but reports from Borrioboola Gha? The
best book I have read--Ticknor's "Prescott," Alger's "Future
Life," Furness's "Veil Partly Lifted," etc., notwithstanding--is De
Tocqueville's "Ancient Regime and the Revolution."

Your old friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

Nov. 9, 1864.

CHARMING! I will be as bad as I can. Talk about being "useful to
the world"! If the people that do the most good, or get it to be
clone,--same thing,--are to be sought for, are n't they the wicked ones?
Where had been the philanthropists, heroes, martyrs, but for them? [275]
Where had been Clark, and Wilberforce, but for the slave-catchers? Where
Howard, but for cruel sailors? Where Brace, but for naughty boys? Where
our noble President of the Sanitary, but for the wicked Rebels? And how
should I ever have known that Mrs. Lane was capable of such a fine and
eloquent indignation, if, instead of being a bad boy, "neglecting
the opportunities" thrown in my way, I had been just a good sort of
middle-aged man, "in the prime of life," doing as I ought? Really, there
ought to be a society got up to make bad people,--they are so useful!
I heard a man say of Bellows, the other day in the cars, "He is a
noble man!" And it was an Orthodox, formerly a member and elder of
Dr. Spring's church. And what do you think he said to me? "Don't you
remember me?"--"No."--"Don't you remember when you were a young man,
in Dodge Sayre's bookstore, that Jasper Corning and I set up a
Sunday-school for colored people in Henry Street, and that you taught in
it for several months? And a good teacher you were, too." Not a bit of
it. Oh, dear me! I hope there are some other good things which I have
done in the world that I don't remember. "A grand sermon," you heard
last Sunday, hey? And then went to the "Century" Rooms, to see the
decorations of the Bryant Festival! It seems to me that was rather a
queer thing t