igns the bills. These
inscrutable counter-signatures are accomplished by ROBERT MENZIES,
our excellent Deputy Bank Comptroller. His cabalistic 'R. Menzies'
does not greatly resemble a well-executed specimen of copperplate
engraving. The initial 'R' is always plain enough, but the
'Menzies' is sometimes read Moses, and sometimes Muggins, and is
always liable to be translated Meazles.

Mr. MENZIES is a Scotchman, brimful of Caledonian lore and
enthusiasm. His penmanship is not always so sublimely obscure as
his performances on bank-paper would indicate; but in its best
estate it is capable of sometimes more than one reading. Witness
the following instance: In the winter of 1858 and '9, Mr. MENZIES
delivered a very interesting lecture, before a literary society,
in Prairie du Chien; subject, THE SONG-WRITERS OF SCOTLAND. Mr. M.
not residing at Prairie du Chien, the lecture was, of course, the
subject of a preliminary correspondence. At the meeting of the
society next previous to the one when the lecture was delivered,
Elder BRUNSON, the president, announced that he had received a
letter from Mr. MENZIES, accepting the invitation to lecture
before the society, and naming as the subject of his lecture 'THE
LONG WINTERS or SCOTLAND.'

* * * * *

Readers who are afflicted with the isothermal doctrine may experience
some benefit from the perusal of a letter for which we are indebted to a
friend not very far 'out West:'--

SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

DEAR CONTINENTAL:

I have a friend who would be sound on the goose, as I verily
believe, and a patriotic anti-Jeff Davis platform Emancipator, if
he hadn't unfortunately picked up a fine learned word. That word
is

ISOTHERMAL.

And that word he carries about as a hen carries a boiled
potato--something too big to swallow but nice to peck at. And he
pecks at it continually.

'I could admit that the slaves should be free,' he says, 'but then
nature, you know, has fixed an isothermal line. She has
isothermally deemed that south of that line the black is
isothermally fitted to isothermalize or labor according to the
climate as a slave.'

'Good,' I replied. 'So you admit that all anthropological
characteristics as developed by climate are quite right?'

[He liked that word 'anthropological,' and assen