ients of
abundant tokens of good-will; and perhaps the familiar instance may have
pardon for its recital, in illustration of the mercy which the
letter-bearer may not seldom find. An epistle from a mutual acquaintance
was our opportunity of intercourse with a venerable bachelor residing in
the city of Antwerp. It was so urged upon us, that the least we could do
was to present it, expecting only a few minutes' agreeable conversation.
Shall we ever forget the instant welcome that beamed from his benignant
face, or how he honored the draft upon him by immediately calling upon
all the members of our travelling-party? how literally, against all our
expostulations, he gave himself up to us, attending us to
picture-galleries and zoological gardens, insisting on disbursing the
entrance-fee for us all, with our unavoidable allowance at the moment,
and, on our exaction of a just reckoning with him at last, declining to
name the sum, on the unanswerable plea of an old man's poor and failing
memory! "Does the old man still live?" Surely he does the better life in
heaven, if his gray locks on earth are under the sod, and it is too late
for these poor lines to reach his eyes, for our sole repayment. Without
note, but only chance introduction, a similar case of disinterested
bounty in Liverpool from one of goodness undiscriminating as the Divine,
which gives the sun and rain to all, stood in strange contrast with the
reception of a Manchester manufacturer, almost whose only manifestation
in reply to the document we tendered was a sort of growl that _we could
see mills in Lowell like those under his own control_. Perhaps, from his
shrewd old head, as he kept his seat at his desk, like a sharp-shooter
on the watch and wary for the foe, he only covered us with the surly
weapon of his tongue in the equitable way for which we have here been
contending ourselves! Certainly we were quite satisfied, if the
Englishman was.

But printed lies, as well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are
bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its
reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its
patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He
cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly
borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with
which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in
our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming i