Do I dote, Don Bob?  Is there a smirk, a villanous, unfeeling, disagreeable, cynical sneer, lurking under your confounded moustache?  I know you of old, you miserable, mocking Mephistopheles!—­you sneerer, you scoffer, you misbeliever!  No more of that, or I will travel three hundred miles expressly to break your head.  Take a glass of claret, Bob, and be true to your better nature; for I suppose you have a better nature packed away somewhere, if one could but get at it.  Those who have no children may laugh, but as a paterfamilias you should be ashamed to do so.  And after all, this is a pretty serious business.  As I sit here and dream and hope and pray, and try to compute the infinite responsibility which has come with this infinite joy, I am very humble, and I murmur, “Who is sufficient? who is sufficient?” And if you will look at the right-hand corner of this page, you will find a great splashy blot.  Lachrymal, Bob, upon my word!  ’Tis time to write “Yours, &c.”  Moreover, I am needed for some duty in the nursery.  Pleasant dreams!  Health and happiness to Senora Wagonero, and all the little doubleyous.  With assurances, &c., I remain, &c., &c.,

  PAUL POTTER.

P.S.—­Could you tell me the precise age at which Japanese children begin to learn the use of globes?

P.P.S.—­Do Spanish nurses use Daffy?  Is there any truth in the statement of Don Lopez Cervantes Murillo, that Columbus was “brought up by hand”?

P.P.P.S.—­Could you give me the aggregate weight of all the children born in the Island of Formosa, from 1692 to the present time, with the proportion of the sexes, and the average annual mortality, and any other perfectly useless information respecting that island?

   P. P.

  THE LAST LOOK.

  Naushon, September 22d, 1858.

    Behold—­not him we knew! 
  This was the prison which his soul looked through,
    Tender, and brave, and true.

    His voice no more is heard;
  And his dead name—­that dear familiar word—­
    Lies on our lips unstirred.

    He spake with poet’s tongue;
  Living, for him the minstrel’s lyre was strung: 
    He shall not die unsung!

    Grief tried his love, and pain;
  And the long bondage of his martyr-chain
    Vexed his sweet soul,—­in vain!

    It felt life’s surges break,
  As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake,
    Smiling while tempests wake.

    How can we sorrow more? 
  Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before
    To that untrodden shore!

    Lo, through its leafy screen,
  A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green,
    Untrodden, half unseen!

    Here let his body rest,
  Where the calm shadows that his soul loved best
    May slide above his breast.

    Smooth his uncurtained bed;
  And if some natural tears are softly shed,
    It is not for the dead.