Long'z Congress seems purvided, like yer street-cars an' yer 'busses,

With ollers room for jes' one more o' your spiled-inbakin' cusses,

Dough 'thout the emptins of a soul, an' yit with means

about 'em

(Like essence-peddlers *) thet 'll make folks long to be without 'em,

Jest heavy 'nough to turn a scale thet's doubtfle the

wrong way,

An' make their natʼral arsenal o' bein' nasty pay,Long'z them things last, (an' I don't see no gret signs of improvin',)

I sha'n't up stakes, not hardly yit, nor 't would n't pay for movin' ;

For, 'fore you lick us, it'll be the long'st day ever you

sec.

Yourn, (ez I 'xpec' to be nex' spring,)

B., MARKISS o' BIG BOOSY.

• A rustic euphemism for the American variety of the Mephitis.—H. W.

No. IV.

A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN SECRET

SESSION.

CONJECTURALLY REPORTED BY H. BIGLOW.

To the Editors of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Jaalam, 10th March, 1862.

GENTLEMEN,-My leisure has been so entirely occupied with the hitherto fruitless endeavour to decypher the Runick inscription whose fortunate discovery I mentioned in my last communication, that I have not found time to discuss, as I had intended, the great problem of what we are to do with slavery, a topick on which the publick mind in this place is at present more than ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes are I need not say, but for safe conclusion I do not conceive that we are yet in possession of facts erough on which to bottom them with certainty. Acknowledging the hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, I am sometimes inclined to think that they are wiser than we, and am willing to wait till we have made this continent once more a place where freemen can live in security and honour, before assuming any further responsibility. This is the view taken by my neighbour Habakkuk Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage Tunnel.

After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman, a few days since, I expanded, on the audi alteram partem principle, something which he happened to say by way of Illustration, into the following fable.

FESTINA LENTE.

ONCE on a time there was a pool
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool
And spotted with cow-lilies garish,
of frogs and pouts the ancient parish.
Alders the creaking redwings sink on,
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion,
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian;
And many a moss-embroidered log,
The watering-place of summer frog,
Slept and decayed with patient skill,
As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme,
Which realized the fairest dream,
That ever dozing bull-frog had,
Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad,
There rose a party with a mission
To mend the polliwogs' condition,
Who notified the sélectmen

To call a meeting there and then.

"Some kind of steps," they said, "are needed;
They don't come on so fast as we did :

Let's dock their tails; if that don't make 'em
Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em!

That boy, that came the other day
To dig some flag-root down this way,
His jack-knife left, and 't is a sign
That Heaven approves of our design:
"T were wicked not to urge the step on,
When Providence has sent the weapon."

Old croakers, deacons of the mire,
That led the deep batrachian choir,

Uk! Uk! Caronk! with bass that migh
Have left Lablache's out of sight,

Shook nobby heads, and said, "No go!
You'd better let 'em try to grow:
Old Doctor Time is slow, but still
He does know how to make a pill."

But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.

"Lord knows," protest the polliwogs,
"We 're anxious to be grown-up frogs;
But do not undertake the work
Of Nature till she prove a shirk;
"T is not by jumps that she advances,
But wins her way by circumstances:
Pray, wait awhile, until you know
We're so contrived as not to grow;
Let Nature take her own direction,
And she 'll absorb our imperfection;
You might n't like 'em to appear with,

But we must have the things to steer with.

Next day was reeking, fit to smotlier,

With heads and tails that missed each other,-
Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts:
The only gainers were the pouts.

MORAL.

From lower to the higher next,

Not to the top, is Nature's text;

And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,―flectere si nequeo SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo. To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States with us in principle, a consummation that seems to be nearer than nany imagine. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum, is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos. I rejoice in the President's late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy.

As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads. I do not understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict with iron. It is not enough merely to have the right on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition. I have observed in my parochial experience (haud ignarus mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare,