importance to us which it has with
those who are really connected with the occurrences. Every group of
immigrants we meet, every wedding party we attend, every funeral train
we join, contains in itself a story of deep and thrilling interest;
the power of genius only is necessary to collect and combine the
incidents, to bring in the feelings and hopes of the parties, and to
present to the reader what the unobtrusive actor does, feels, hopes,
fears and suffers.

Ungifted to catch the beauties of the landscape and transfer them to
canvas, unpracticed in the simplest movement of the artist's duties, I
can only stand and admire what Providence has spread around with a
profusion of bounty, and as colors deepen or fade, and beauties
augment or diminish, I bow with admiration at the object, and
increased love to Him whose hand garnished the heavens, and whose
goodness is as manifest "in these his lower works" as in the
constellated glories of the firmament, whose systems combine to enrich
with heatless light worlds of space--and the infinite seems exhausted
to gem with starry lustre earth's evening canopy.

Equally unsupplied am I with that genius which seizes on passing
incidents, and moulds them to important events, building the
interesting and the sublime on the simple and the ordinary. I have not
these gifts, but I have the love for the gifts, the sense of their
existence in others, and a sort of conception of the time and the
place in which they should be employed; and often, as I pass along, I
select groups and note incidents that with the child of genius would
be seed for a golden harvest. And scenes, too, that escape the general
eye, or only excite the exclamation "how beautiful," press upon me
till I wish that I had the genius and skill to fix the picture which
Nature has drawn, and show that our own land and own vicinity are full
of those beauties which true taste admires, which, transferred to
canvas, become in turn the stimulant to taste. Yet the scenes which I
see, and the occurrences which I note, may be of use to those who know
better how to combine and present the materials; and what I saw and
heard, others may present in an attractive form.

During the close of August and the first of September last I was, in
obedience to an imperative call, engaged in some business in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The little borough was crowded with
delegates to two conventions then being held, for the purpose of
nominating c