happiness and delight to the world, which thanks
them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may
not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or
rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid
to OUR SERVICE. We may not win the baton or epaulettes; but God give us
strength to guard the honor of the flag!

ON HALF A LOAF.

A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW YORK, BANKERS.

Is it all over? May we lock up the case of instruments? Have we signed
our wills; settled up our affairs; pretended to talk and rattle quite
cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that they should not be alarmed;
sneaked away under some pretext, and looked at the children sleeping in
their beds with their little unconscious thumbs in their months, and a
flush on the soft-pillowed cheek; made every arrangement with Colonel
MacTurk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a great
deal too well to think he will ever give in; invented a monstrous
figment about going to shoot pheasants with Mac in the morning, so as to
soothe the anxious fears of the dear mistress of the house; early as the
hour appointed for the--the little affair--was, have we been awake hours
and hours sooner; risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps,
that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement with the other side;
at seven o'clock (confound his punctuality!) heard his cab-wheel at
the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and
well shaved; driven off with him in the cold morning, after a very
unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread-and-butter (which
choke, somehow, in the swallowing); driven off to Wormwood Scrubs in the
cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning; stepped out of the cab, where Mac
has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in the common; in one minute
more, seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, one of
whom has a case like MacTurk's under his arm;--looked round and round
the solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman--no, no more
than in a row in London;--deprecated the horrible necessity which drives
civilized men to the use of powder and bullet;--taken ground as firmly
as may be, and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons; and
when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three--have we
even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) walk up,
and say: "Co