ear to be, there are many to come, many to go, and but few
to tarry; yet _all_ have their ambitions of a life-time; those even, to
whom the stars have grown dim, and life become almost a mockery under
Heaven, dashing into the coming day with something of the old zest; while
the many, the _oi polloi_, who have not yet made their grand move, are now
ready, and think that therefore the earth is to take a new route in
creation; forgetting that the old round must be the round for ever. Nights
sleepless with joy, nights sleepless with pain, nights long with watching,
feverish thought; crime that stings like an adder, and nights short with
perfect rest; days long and weary, days bright and dashing, hot and cold,
wet and dry, and days and nights with all of these--as hath been in the
time that's past, and will be in the time to come.

'There is something very pitiable in these humors, Mr. EDITOR; indeed very
laughable, if your mouth is shaped to that effect; but as it happens with
me to-night, my mouth refuses to twitch except in one direction. Its
corners have what Prof. P---- used to call the 'downward tendencies.'
Perhaps it is because this is with me the anniversary of a day upon the
events of which are hanging the movements of all after-life; it may be
this, and there may be thereto added the coloring of a winter's day. The
wind howls about the house-tops, and the air pierces like needles; even
the stars, when they look down in thousands, as the rack goes by, seem to
shiver in their high places; yet perhaps there is nothing so personal in
all that, considering that just so the wind howled last night, and may for
a month to come; but oh! as I am a nervous man, and look back upon the
circling months, and feel the sting here and the stab there, in that
galvanic battery; and as I look forward with eager eye, and ear open to
the faintest whisper of the dim to-morrow, it is not as the stars shiver
from excess of light, but with a shudder at the heart from the cooler
blood of----Good night, my kind EDITOR; that sentence is quite too long
already, and there are some things too personal to tell.

* * * * *

'P. S.--Whoop! hurrah! Light upon the world again! Where are you, my fine
EDITOR? I say Sir, I was an ass--do you hear?--an _ass_, premature, wise
before my time, a brute, a blockhead! Did I talk of dust and ashes? Oh!
Sir, I lied multitudinously. Every nerve, every muscle that didn't try to
stran