been so repeatedly urged to print some part of them for the
gratification of the public, that they felt it their duty at least to
make some effort to satisfy so urgent a demand. They have accordingly
carefully examined the papers intrusted to them, but find most of the
productions of Mr. Wilbur's pen so fragmentary, and even chaotic,
written as they are on the backs of letters in an exceedingly cramped
chirography,--here a memorandum for a sermon; there an observation of
the weather; now the measurement of an extraordinary head of cabbage,
and then of the cerebral capacity of some reverend brother deceased; a
calm inquiry into the state of modern literature, ending in a method of
detecting if milk be impoverished with water, and the amount thereof;
one leaf beginning with a genealogy, to be interrupted halfway down with
an entry that the brindle cow had calved,--that any attempts at
selection seemed desperate. His only complete work, 'An Enquiry
concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast,' even in the abstract of it
given by Mr. Hitchcock, would, by a rough computation of the printers,
fill five entire numbers of our journal, and as he attempts, by a new
application of decimal fractions, to identify it with the Emperor
Julian, seems hardly of immediate concern to the general reader. Even
the Table-Talk, though doubtless originally highly interesting in the
domestic circle, is so largely made up of theological discussion and
matters of local or preterite interest, that we have found it hard to
extract anything that would at all satisfy expectation. But, in order to
silence further inquiry, we subjoin a few passages as illustrations of
its general character.]

I think I could go near to be a perfect Christian if I were always a
visitor, as I have sometimes been, at the house of some hospitable
friend. I can show a great deal of self-denial where the best of
everything is urged upon me with kindly importunity. It is not so very
hard to turn the other cheek for a kiss. And when I meditate upon the
pains taken for our entertainment in this life, on the endless variety
of seasons, of human character and fortune, on the costliness of the
hangings and furniture of our dwelling here, I sometimes feel a singular
joy in looking upon myself as God's guest, and cannot but believe that
we should all be wiser and happier, because more grateful, if we were
always mindful of our privilege in this regard. And should we not rate
more cheaply