ide of its primary beneficent purpose, it may make
provision for charities incidental thereunto. It may appoint one
committee for the prevention of cruelty to compositors, to examine the
chirography of all MSS. about to be 'put in hand,' and, in any case it
thinks necessary, return mercilessly the whole scrawled mass to the
author to have t's crossed, i's dotted, a's and o's joined at the top,
etc., etc. Another privileged three may be merciful to the authors
themselves, by providing for the better reading of proofs, by examining
and qualifying the readers thereof; a class in this country very
deficient, and for a happy reason: namely, that we have not yet a
multitude of literary men, very well educated and very poor, who can
find nothing better to do. This last committee would find comparatively
little occupation, when the previous one had become effective in _its_
line.

To what an illimitable enterprise does the vastness of our plans lead
us! Long vistas open before our eyes, with fine prospects for patronage
and the gift of many offices. It is at least equal in dignity and
grandeur to the city government, and nothing prevents its becoming a
vast scheme of corruption, except that it never can, by any possibility,
possess a penny of revenue. Of course there should be a committee of
repairs and supplies, and one of immigration, the latter to provide for
the naturalization of foreign words and their proper treatment before
they could take care of themselves; the former for furnishing a supply
to meet the growing demand mentioned at the beginning of this article,
and for patching up several of the most obvious imperfections we now
suffer from. We want a word for _the opposite of a compliment_. Not that
this is as great a defect as the lack of the word _compliment_ would be
in these smooth-spoken times, but still the want is felt, and the
feeling is shown by such awkward expedients as the expression 'a
left-handed compliment.' Then, besides, they might give the seal of
legitimacy to a fine lot of words and phrases, the need of which is
shown by their being spontaneously invented, and universally adopted by
the vulgar; but which are not classic, have never been written except in
caricature, and are therefore inadmissible to the writings of us
cowardly fellows who 'do' the current literature. For instance: the word
_onto_, to bear the same relation to _on_ and _upon_, that the word
_into_ does to _in_ and _within_, has no s