ploy.

Yours faithfully,

&c. &c.

Baldeagleville, Feb. 10, 1859.

My dear &c. &c.,

The wagon, which accompanies this, will bring you a copy of the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica." The reading of this choice morceau of
contemporary literature will suggest to you nearly all I have to say
in reply to your interesting communication of the 28th September
last. By reading, in succession, the articles Confucius,
Fortification, Sandwich Islands, and AEsthetics, you will form some
notion of the mingled emotions with which I remain:

Yours truly,

N.N.

P. S. The amount of time required for mastering the Greek language,
in order thoroughly to enjoy some passages of your charming note,
alone prevents me from sending so full an answer as I should wish.

In these days, when everybody's correspondence is published as soon
as he is dead,--or during his life, if he is unfortunate enough to
be the Director of an Observatory, and there is a chance of injuring
him by the breach of confidence,--we cannot help thinking that the
forms we have given above are not only more compendious, but safer,
than Mr. Cushing's. If his method should come into vogue, posterity
would be deprived of the letters of this generation for nearly a
century by the time necessary to print them, and then, allowing for
the imperious intervals of sleep, would hardly contrive to get
through them in less than a couple of centuries more. We leave to
those who have read Mr. Cushing's reply to the Craytonville
invitation the painful task of estimating the loss to the world from
such a contingency. Meanwhile, the perplexing question arises,--If
such be the warrior-statesman's measure of gratitude for a dinner,
what would be his scale for a breakfast or a dish of tea? Caesar
announced a victory in three words; but in this respect he was very
inferior to Mr. Cushing, whose style is much more copious, and who
shows as remarkable talents in the command of language as the other
general did in the command of troops.

On first reading Mr. Cushing's letter, its obscurity puzzled us not
a little. There are passages in it that would have pleased Lycophron
himself, who wished he might be hanged if anybody could understand
his poem. Dilution was to be expected in a production whose author
had to make three columns out of "Thank you, can't come." Even a
person overrunning with the milk of human kindness, as Mr. Cushing,
on so remarkable an occasion, undoubtedly was, might