would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The
venerable augurs of the literary or scientifictemple may smile

faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in
general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating

and imploring a man to stay with you with the implied compact
between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor

wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these
bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of

unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling
hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself

into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's-
drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat

them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, which can
be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service!

How kind the "Critical Notices" - where small authorship comes to
pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy - always are

to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and
other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips;

don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their
pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and

unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names
will be household words a thousand years from now.

"A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits
opposite, thoughtfully.

- Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the
Island, deer-shooting. - How many did I bag? I brought home one

buck shot. - The Island is where? No matter. It is the most
splendid domain that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue

sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little
boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are

stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-
sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles;

beeches, oaks, most numerous; - many of them hung with moss,
looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge,

dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and
goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as

soft as swan's down. Rocks scattered about, - Stonehenge-like
monoliths. Fresh-water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-

clear, full of flashing pickerel lying under the lily-pads like
tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for

breakfast. EGO FECIT.
The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my

Latin. No, sir, I said, - you need not trouble yourself. There is
a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and

Stoddard. Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the

like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing
in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful,

which has not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has
welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman

who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine,
to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of

empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white
teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the

keenest and his story the best.
[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I

don't believe I talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's
conversation, one cannot help BLAIR-ing it up more or less, ironing

out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and
plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at the

looking-glass.]
- How can a man help writingpoetry in such a place? Everybody

does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in
the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of

unpublished verse, - some by well-known hands, and others quite as
good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers, - men

who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy
ten acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had

left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the
rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in

the west, vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or
dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to

the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the
windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and

moralized thus:-
SUN AND SHADOW.

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,

Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:

Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, -
Of breakers that whiten and roar;

How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him that gaze from the shore!

He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,

As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;

Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!

- Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good
mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if

anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or
reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough

to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We
frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in

consequence of what are called RELIGIOUS mental disturbances. I
confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same

notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well,
outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he

really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his
discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use

of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than
one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight

over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any
human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel,

heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and
perhaps for entire races, - anything that assumes the necessity of

the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated, -
no matter by what name you call it, - no matter whether a fakir, or

a monk, or a deacon believes it, - if received, ought to produce
insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a

normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of
some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly

well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of