may
have a claim to encouragement and assistance in their endeavors to
reach the mark; but they have no right to expect that the distance
shall be regulated to suit their convenience.

Dr. Wood's admissions in regard to the excellence of the army medical
service during the war are seized upon with natural exultation by his
opponent, who draws from them a legitimate inference in favor of the
general status of medical skill and knowledge throughout the country.
If Dr. Wood really intended to say--what his language, we confess,
would seem to imply--that the service attained its high state of
efficiency in a few months, we do not well see how he is to resist the
conclusion thus pressed upon him. But we conceive the truth to be that
either his phraseology or his recollection of the facts was at fault.
It is well known that at the beginning of the war it was impossible to
find competent surgeons in anything like the number that was
needed, and that the examining boards were consequently forced to be
ridiculously lenient. We know of an able surgeon who after a battle
found that he had not a single assistant in his corps who could be
trusted to perform an operation. This state of matters was the direct
result of the imperfect education given in the schools. Not one man in
ten who leaves them has ever been practically exercised in operations
on the cadaver, and the proportion was still smaller before the war.
It is easy therefore to understand, while it would be painful to
recall, the circumstances under which the great bulk of our army
surgeons acquired the requisite proficiency. The ultimate success
of our medical service, like the final triumph of our armies, was
preceded by many woeful blunders and mishaps, and, like that, was due
in great measure to a lavish outlay which would scarcely have been
possible in any European war, and to the general devotion and united
efforts which drew out all the resources of the country, of whatever
kind, and directed them to the furtherance of a single aim.

OUR EARLY NEWSPAPERS.

In looking over the contents of the old newspapers of this country, of
which there was a considerable number as early as the year 1730, one
is specially struck by the number of advertisements of slave sales and
of runaway slaves, apprentices and servants. The following are common
examples:

"To be sold, a very likely Negro woman about 30 years of Age, has been
in this city about 10. She is a fine Cook,