*

A PEOPLE OF TASTE.

The extraordinary liberality of the generous people of Connecticut has
frequently excited apprehension in the minds of their friends, that,
sooner or later, as the result of their spendthrift career, they must
come to beggary. But we are glad to hear that they are making an effort
in New Haven to reform. The grocery men there say that their customers
taste so much before they can make up their minds to buy anything, that
what with gratuitous slices of cheese and specimen mouthfuls of sugar
and sample spoonfuls of molasses, the shop-keeper's profits are most
dolefully diminished. A particularly BLUE LAW against this economical
custom will have the effect of sobering down these brilliant Cullers.

* * * * *

"What Answer?"

Is it likely that HORACE GREELEY, or any other man, could steer this
country through its difficulties by means of the tillers of the soil?

* * * * *

ANY MORE CAVES?

About the dreariest magazine or other reading we know of--and we get a
deal of it, too--is that which describes the visits of enthusiastic
persons to big caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly,
funereal--with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and
certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts,
who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a
boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself
with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and
"Halls," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal Wreaths" they see
there are not only finer than real ones (if you would believe them!) but
so grand and wonderful as to be really indescribable. So we find them,
by their turgid and stupid reports, which are all alike, and all dreary
and silly. We have never heard of anybody who got excited over these
pictures (except the artists themselves); and positively there is no
flatter reading anywhere than these gushing notes about big caves.

* * * * *

GEOMETRICAL.

Why is it that we hear so much of the proper "Sphere" of woman? Here is
that noble exile, the Princess Editha Montez, lecturing again, and her
subject, of course, is the Spherical one. So when Mesdames Stanton,
Dickinson, Anthony, Howe--all the lovely lecturers--discourse, they
forget the platform which is plane, and discuss the "sphere" which is
mysterious