barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!" - ye
Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too,

ascend the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars! - ye
Amines of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of

native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest
fare, until, like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you have "made

a Golgotha" of your pages! - ponder thereon!]
- Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses.

You will understand by the title that they are written in an
imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man

well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on A
PRIORI grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is

no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a
soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and

nurtured it; that its mysterious COMPAGES or frame-work has
survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature of maturity;

that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to
the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial

clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select
the very locality where this audacious generalization has been

acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and
trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is

a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.
- Now hear the verses.

THE OLD MAN DREAMS.
O for one hour of youthful joy!

Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy

Than reign a gray-beard king!
Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!

Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,

And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream

From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream

Of life all love and fame!
- My listening angel heard the prayer,

And calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,

Thy hasty wish hath sped.
"But is there nothing in thy track

To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back

To find the wished-for day?"
- Ah, truest soul of womankind!

Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:

I'll take - my - precious wife!
- The angel took a sapphire pen

And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,

And be a husband too!"
- "And is there nothing yet unsaid

Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled

With those dissolving years!"
Why, yes; for memory would recall

My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all;

I'll take - my - girl - and - boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen, -

"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,

And be a father too!"
And so I laughed, - my laughter woke

The household with its noise, -
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,

To please the gray-haired boys.
CHAPTER IV.

[I AM so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to
remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great

many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of
different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the

breakfasts, - sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must
take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me

to? No. 1. want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a

"good storey" which he has copied out for me. (I suppose two
letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who

told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand) - more poetry. No. 4.
wants something that would be of use to a practical man.

(PRAHCTICAL MAHN he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged,
sweet-scented) - "more sentiment," - " heart's outpourings." -

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such
remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their

character will depend on many accidents, - a good deal on the
particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It

so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the
divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I

need not mention, saw to interfere, with more or less propriety, in
the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of

course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect
all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of

what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather
like this vein, - possibly prefer it to a livelier one, - serious

young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis
from - years of age to - inclusive.

Another privilege of talking is to misquote. - Of course it wasn't
Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair, - but IRIS. (As I

have since told you) it was the former lady's regular business, but
Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on

the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here - Juno, in Latin
- sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that

one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for the celebrated
"Oceanic Miscellany" misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse.

"Waft us HOME the MESSAGE" of course it ought to be. Will he be
duly grateful for the correction?]

- The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to
be governed, not by, but ACCORDING TO laws, such as we observe in

the larger universe. - You think you know all about WALKING, -
don't you, now? Well, how do you suppose your lower limbs are held

to your body? They are sucked up by two cupping vessels,
("cotyloid" - cup-like - cavities,) and held there as long as you

live, and longer. At any rate, you think you move them backward
and forward at such a rate as your will determines, don't you? - On

the contrary, they swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a
fixed rate, determined by their length. You can alter this by

muscular power, as you can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and
make it move faster or slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by

the same mechanism as the movements of the solar system.
[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring me to

certain German physiologists by the name of Weber for proof of the
facts, which, however, he said he had often verified. I

appropriated it to my own use; what can one do better than this,
when one has a friend that tells him anything worth remembering?

The Professor seems to think that man and the general powers of the
universe are in partnership. Some one was saying that it had cost

nearly half a million to move the Leviathan only so far as they had
got it already. - Why, - said the Professor, - they might have