He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,--
And be sure that he'll have it on you!

* * * * *

THE GREAT EVENT OF THE CENTURY.

A LETTER FROM PAUL TOTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO,
COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

22,728 Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., New York, May 1, 1858.

Dear Don Bobus,--Pardon my abruptness. _In medias res_ is the rule,
you know, _formose puer_, my excellent old boy! Bring out the Saint
Peray, if there be a bottle of that flavorous and flavous tipple in
your extensive cellars,--which I doubt, since you never had more
than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller,
who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street,
in Boston. We drank it, O ale-knight, _sub teg. pat. fag._ more
than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then
undisfigured by the New Chapel. That it did not kill us as dead as
Stilpo of Megara (_vide_ Seneca _de Const_. for a notice of that
foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my abstinence and your
naturally strong constitution; for I remember that you bolted nearly
the whole of it. You proved yourself to be a Mithridates of white
lead; while I--but I say no more. I could quote you an appropriate
passage from the tippler of Teos, and in the original Greek, if I
had not long ago pawned my copy of Anacreon (Barnes, 12 mo. Cantab.
1721) to a fellow in Cornhill, who sold it on the very next day to
a total-abstinence tutor. Episodically I may say, that the purchaser
read it to such purpose, that within a week he rose to the honor of
sleeping in the station-house, from which keep he was rescued by a
tearful friend, who sent him to the country, solitude, and
spruce-beer.

"It is useless," says the Staggerite, "for a sober man to knock at
the door of the Muses." It may also be useless for a sober man to
try to write letters to "The New York Scorpion." In your perilous
and unhappy situation you must be a rule unto yourself. But remember,
O Bobus, the saying of Montaigne, that "apoplexy will knock down
Socrates as well as a porter." You are not exactly Socrates; but
your best friends have remarked that you are getting to be
exceedingly stout. Stick to your cups, but forbear, as Milton says,
"to interpose them oft." _In medio tutissimus_,--Half a noggin is
better than no wine. For the sake of the dear old times, spare me the
pain of see