You'd better b'lieve ther' 's nothin' like this spendin' days an'

nights

Along 'ith a dependent race fer civerlizin' whites.

But this wuz all prelim'nary; it's so Gran' Jurors here
Fin' a true bill, a hendier way than ourn, an' nut so dear;
So arter this they sentenced me, to make all tight 'n' snug,
Afore a reg'lar court o' law, to ten years in the Jug.

I did n' make no gret defence: you don't feel much like speakin',
When, ef you let your clamshells gape, a quart o'tar will leak in :
I hev hearn tell o' wingèd words, but pint o' fact it tethers

The spoutin' gift to hev your words tu thick sot on with feathers, An' Choate ner Webster would n't ha' made an Alkin' o' speech Astride a Southun chestnut horse sharper 'n a baby's screech.

Two year ago they ketched the thief, 'n' seein' I wuz innercent, They jest oncorked an' le' me run, an' in my stid the sinner sent To see how he liked pork 'n' pone flavored with wa'nut saplin', An' nary social priv'ledge but a one-hoss, starn-wheel chaplin. When I come out, the folks behaved mos' gen'manly an' harn

some;

They 'lowed it would n't be more 'n right, ef I should cuss 'n'

darn some:

The Cunnle he apolergized; suz he, “I'll du wut 's right,

I'll give ye settisfection now by shootin' ye at sight,

An' give the nigger, (when he 's caught,) to pay him fer his trickin'
In gittin' the wrong man took up, a most H fired lickin',-
It's jest the way with all on 'em, the inconsistent critters,
They 're 'most enough to make a man blaspheme his mornin'
bitters;

I'll be your frien' thru thick an' thin an' in all kines o' weathers,
An' all you'll hev to pay fer 's jest the waste o' tar an' feathers:
A lady owned the bed, ye see, a widder, tu, Miss Shennon;
It wuz her mite; we would ha' took another, ef ther 'd ben one:
We don't make no charge for the ride an' all the other fixins.
Le''s liquor; Gin'ral, you can chalk our friend for all the mixins."
A meetin' then wuz called, where they "RESOLVED, Thet we

respec'

B. S. Esquire for quallerties o' heart an' intellec'
Peculiar to Columby's sile, an' not to no one else's,

دو

Thet makes Európean tyrans scringe in all their gilded pel'ces, An' doos gret honor to our race an' Southun institootions: (I give ye jest the substance o' the leadin' resolootions :)

Thet makes my writin' seem to squirm; a Southuner 'd allow I'd Some call to shake, for I've jest hed to meller a new cowhide. Miss S. is all 'f a lady; th' ain't no better on Big Boosy,

Ner one with more accomplishmunts 'twixt here an' Tuscaloosy ;
She's an F. F., the tallest kind, an' prouder 'n the Gran' Turk,
An' never hed a relative thet done a stroke o' work;

Hern ain't a scrimpin' fem❜ly sech ez you git up Down East,
Th' ain't a growed member on 't but owes his thousuns et the least :
She is some old; but then agin ther' 's drawbacks in my sheer :
Wut 's left o' me ain't more 'n enough to make a Brigadier :
The wust is, she hez tantrums; she is like Seth Moody's gun
(Him thet wuz nicknamed frum his limp Ole Dot an' Kerry One);
He'd left her loaded up a spell, an' hed to git her clear,
So he onhitched,-Jeerusalem! the middle o' last year

Wuz right nex' door compared to where she kicked the critter tu (Though jest where he brought up wuz wut no human never knew);

His brother Asaph picked her up an' tied her to a tree,

An' then she kicked an hour 'n' a half afore she'd let it be:
Wal, Miss S. doos hev cuttins-up an' pourins-out o' vials,
But then she hez her widder's thirds, an' all on uz hez trials.
My objec❜, though, in writin' now warn't to allude to sech,
But to another suckemstance more dellykit to tech,-

I want thet you should grad❜lly break my merriage to Jerushy,
An' there's a heap of argymunts thet's emple too indooce ye:
Fust place, State's Prison,-wal, it's true it warn't fer crime, o’

course,

But then it's jest the same fer her in gittin' a disvorce;

Nex' place, my State's secedin' out hez leg❜lly lef' me free

To merry any one I please, pervidin' it's a she;

Fin❜lly, I never wun't come back, she need n't hev no fear on 't, But then it's wal to fix things right fer fear Miss S. should hear on 't ;

Lastly, I've gut religion South, an' Rushy she's a pagan

Thet sets by th' graven imiges o' the gret Nothun Dagon;
(Now I hain't seen one in six munts, for, sence our Treasury
Loan,

Though yaller boys is thick anough, eagles hez kind o' flown ;)
An' ef J. wants a stronger pint than them thet I hev stated,
Wy, she 's an aliun in'my now, an' I've ben cornfiscated,-
For sence we 've entered on th' estate o' the late nayshnul eagle,
She hain't no kin' o' right but jest wut I allow ez legle :

Wut doos Secedin' mean, ef 't ain't thet natʼrul rights hez riz, 'n' Thet wut is mine 's my own, but wut's another man's ain't his'n?

Besides, I could n't do no else; Miss S. suz she to me,

'You 've sheered my bed," [Thet 's when I paid my interduction fee

To Southun rites,] "an' kep' your sheer," [Wal, I allow it sticked

So 's 't I wuz most six weeks in jail afore I gut me picked,] "Ner never paid no demmiges; but thet wun't do no harm, Pervidin' thet you 'll ondertake to oversee the farm; (My eldes' boy is so took up, wut with the Ringtail Rangers An' settin' in the Jestice-Court for welcomin' o' strangers" ;) [He sot on me ;] "an' so, ef you 'll jest ondertake the care Upon a mod❜rit sellery, we 'll up an' call it square; But ef you can't conclude," suz she, an' give a kin' o' grin, "Wy, the Gran' Jury, I expect, 'll hev to set agin." Thet 's the way metters stood at fust; now wut wuz I to du, But jest to make the best on't an' off coat an' buckle tu? Ther' ain't a livin' man thet finds an income necessarier Than me,-bimeby I'll tell ye how I fin❜lly come to merry her.

She hed another motive, tu: I mention of it here

T'encourage lads thet's growin' up to study 'n' persevere,
An' show 'em how much better 't pays to mind their winter-
schoolin'

Than to go off on benders 'n' sech, an' waste their time in foolin';
Ef 't warn't for studyin' evenins, I never 'd ha' been here
An orn'ment o' saciety, in my approprut spear:

She wanted somebody, ye see, o' taste an' cultivation,
To talk along o' preachers when they stopt to the plantation;
For folks in Dixie th't read an' write, onless it is by jarks
Is skurce ez wut they wuz among th' oridgenal patriarchs;
To fit a feller f' wut they call the soshle higherarchy,

All thet you 've gut to know is jest beyund an evrage darky; Schoolin' 's wut they can't seem to stan', they're tu consarned high-pressure,

An' knowin' t' much might spile a boy for bein' a Secesher.
We hain't no settled preachin' here, ner ministeril taxes ;
The min❜ster's only settlement 's the carpet-bag he packs his
Razor an' soap-brush intu, with his hymbook an' his Bible,—
But they du preach, I swan to man, it's puf'kly indescrib❜le!

They go it like an Ericsson's ten-hoss-power coleric ingine, An' make Ole Split-Foot winch an' squirm, for all he's used to singein';

Hawkins's whetstone ain't a pinch o' primin' to the innards

To hearin' on 'em put free grace t' a lot o' tough old sin-hards!
But I must eend this letter now: 'fore long I'll send a fresh un :
I've lots o' things to write about, perticklerly Seceshun :
I'm called off now to mission-work, to let a leetle law in
To Cynthy's hide: an' so, till death,

Yourn,

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN.

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YANKEE IDYLL.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY."

JAALAM, 6th Jan., 1862.

GENTLEMEN,-I was highly gratified by the insertion of a portion of my letter in the last number of your valuable and entertaining Miscellany, though in a type which rendered its substance inaccessible even to the beautiful new spectacles presented to me by a Committee of the Parish on New Year's Day. I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian. My third grand-daughter, Rebekah, aged fourteen years, and whom I have trained to read slowly and with proper emphasis (a practice too much neglected in our modern systems of education), read aloud to me the excellent essay upon "Old Age," the author of which I cannot help suspecting to be a young man who has never yet known what it was to have snow (canities morosa) upon his own roof. Dissolve frigus, largè super foco ligna reponens, is a rule for the young, whose woodpile is yet abundant for such cheerful lenitives. A good life behind him is the best thing to keep an old man's shoulders from shivering at every breath of sorrow or ill-fortune. But methinks it were easier for an old man to feel the disadvantages of youth than the advantages of age. Of these latter I reckon one of the chiefest to be this: that we attach a less inordinate value to our own productions, and, distrusting daily more and more our own wisdom (with the conceit whereof at twenty we wrap ourselves away from knowledge as with a garment), do reconcile ourselves with the wisdom of God. I could have wished, indeed, that room might have been made for the residue of the anecdote relating to Deacon Tinkham, which would not only have gratified a natural curiosity on the part of the publick (as I have reason to know from several letters of inquiry already received), but would also, as I think, have largely increased the circulation of your Magazine in this town. Nihil humani alienum, there is a curiosity about the affairs of our neighbours which is not only pardonable, but even commendable. But I shall abide a more fitting season,

As touching the following literary effort of Esquire Biglow, much might be profitably said on the topick of Idyllick and Pastoral Poetry, and concerning the proper distinctions to be made between them, from Theocritus, the inventor of the former, to Collins, the latest author I know of who has emulated the classicks in the latter style. But in the time of civil war worthy a Milton to defend and a Lucan to sing, it may be reasonably doubted whether the publick, never too studious of serious instruction, might not consider other objects more deserving of present attention. Concerning the title of Idyll, which Mr. Biglow has adopted at my suggestion, it may not be improper to animadvert, that the name properly signifies a poem somewhat rustick in phrase (for, though the learned are not agreed as to the particular dialect employed by Theocritus, they are universanimous both as to its rusticity and its capacity of rising now and then to the level of more elevated sentiments and expressions), while it is also descriptive of real scenery and manners. Yet it must be admitted that the production now in question (which here and there bears perhaps too plainly the marks of my correcting hand) does partake of the nature of a Pastoral, inasmuch as the interlocutors therein are purely imaginary beings, and the whole is little better than καπνοῦ σκιᾶς ὄναρ. The plot was, as I believe, suggested by the "Twa Briggs" of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet of the last century, as that found its prototype in the "Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey," by Fergusson, though the metre of this latter be different by a foot in each verse. I reminded my talented young parishioner and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an author than to suppose the reader had no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into activity, it were better to be in for the whole sheep than the shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book-an expression questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is not more familiar than with the printed page. In proof of what he affirmed, he showed me some verses which with others he had stricken out as too much delaying the action, but which I communicate in this place because they rightly define "punkin-seed" (which Mr. Bartlett would have a kind of perch-a creature to which I have found a rod or pole not to be so easily equivalent in our inland waters as in the books of arithmetic), and because it conveys an eulogium on the worthy son of an excellent father, with whose acquaintance (ehcu, fugaces anni!) I was formerly honoured.

"But nowadays the Bridge ain't wut they show,
So much ez Em'som, Hawthorne, an' Thoreau.
I know the village, though: was sent there once
A-schoolin', coz to home I played the dunce;
An' I've ben sence a-visitin' the Jedge,
Whose garding whispers with the river's edge,
Where I've sot mornin's lazy as the bream,
Whose only business is to head up-stream,
(We call 'm punkin-seed,) or else in chat
Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat

More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence."

Concerning the subject-matter of the verses, I have not the leisure at present