e, brother, that we have good thoughts unspoken. But the bad ones?
I tell you that the sight of those blank windows in Northumberland
Street--through which, as it were, my mind could picture the awful
tragedy glimmering behind--set me thinking, "Mr. Street-Preacher, here
is a text for one of your pavement sermons. But it is too glum and
serious. You eschew dark thoughts: and desire to be cheerful and
merry in the main." And, such being the case, you see we must have no
Roundabout Essay on this subject.

Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, you know, had William Tell
a bolt for his son, the apple of his eye; and a shaft for Gessler, in
case William came to any trouble with the first poor little target.)
And this, I must tell you, was to have been a rare Roundabout
performance--one of the very best that has ever appeared in this series.
It was to have contained all the deep pathos of Addison; the logical
precision of Rabelais; the childlike playfulness of Swift; the manly
stoicism of Sterne; the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith; the blushing
modesty of Fielding; the epigrammatic terseness of Walter Scott; the
uproarious humor of Sam Richardson; and the gay simplicity of Sam
Johnson;--it was to have combined all these qualities, with some
excellences of modern writers whom I could name:--but circumstances have
occurred which have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible.

I have not the least objection to tell you what was to have been the
subject of that other admirable Roundabout Paper. Gracious powers! the
Dean of St. Patrick's never had a better theme. The paper was to have
been on the Gorillas, to be sure. I was going to imagine myself to be
a young surgeon-apprentice from Charleston, in South Carolina, who ran
away to Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, with which
nobody has the least concern; who sailed thence to Africa in a large,
roomy schooner with an extraordinary vacant space between decks. I was
subject to dreadful ill treatment from the first mate of the ship, who,
when I found she was a slaver, altogether declined to put me on shore.
I was chased--we were chased--by three British frigates and a
seventy-four, which we engaged and captured; but were obliged to scuttle
and sink, as we could sell them in no African port: and I never shall
forget the look of manly resignation, combined with considerable
disgust, of the British Admiral as he walked the plank, after cutting
off his pigtai