hours of
business are over, a daily record, or diary, in which are set down many
of the "choice things" and all the "remarkable occurrences," to which
the day may have given rise. Others--and they are not only wise but
benevolent--do not selfishly shut up these things between the covers of
a private manuscript-volume, but copy them off in a fair hand, and send
them to the editor of some clever journal or magazine, where they are
soon "known and read of all men"--and women. Now _we_ have a collection
of the kind to which we have alluded. When scribbled, they have been
thrown into a drawer of the table whereon they were written. They are of
all kinds and descriptions; of matters humorous and of matters pathetic:
some have come warm from the heart--others come fresh from the fancy.
Many things from the lips of others have been preserved, some of which
drew tears from eyes unused to weep; while, on the other hand, and in
respect of _other_ things, the "water of mirth" has crept into the same
eyes. Of such are the materials of our collection. There will be found
in them no attempts at "fine writing;" for that is a thing as much
beyond our inclination as our power. Simplicity, earnestness, a desire
to put down plainly our own natural thoughts and meditations, and the
brief, amusing, or instructive thoughts of others--these are the means
and this the purpose of our "_Editor's Drawer_." Wherefore, reader,
perpend the first "batch," and patiently await a second and a better.

* * * * *

How much there is in the power of a single felicitous word in poetry,
toward making a perfect picture to the mind of the reader! It often
invests an inanimate object with almost actual life, and makes the
landscape a sentient thing. Here are a few lines that live in our
memory--from PROCTOR, BARRY CORNWALL, if we do not mistake--which are
eminently in illustration of this. The poet is sitting at night-fall
upon a green meadow-bank, with his little daughter by his side, looking
at the setting sun, and the twilight exhalations colored by its evening
beams:

"----Here will we sit,
The while the sun goes down the glowing west,
And drink the balmy air
Exhaling from the meadows; the nectarous breath
Which EARTH sends upward _when her lord, the Sun_,
_Kisses her cheek at parting_."

There is action as well as vitality in this beautiful simile. SHAKS