punishment, I don’t think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears would be worse than the famous ‘diabolical trumpet’ for collecting and distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or discovered them peeping through the assumed lion’s skin.  Apollo’s music probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after he received his ’wonderful ear.’

But my object in introducing Dogberry was not to give a dissertation on this greatest of insults, but to illustrate our selfishness.  Our patience will bear great crimes against others, but how it gives way under the slightest insult to ourselves.  Now I am not going to denounce selfishness; I’d as soon think of denouncing gravitation.  There is, in the best of us, an under-current of selfishness; indeed, selfishness and unselfishness are convertible terms; this is a higher kind of that, as the upper-current of the ocean is but the under-current risen to the surface.

Saint James says:  ‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’  I am not exactly prepared to agree with him; it is a great branch, almost the trunk; but I think selfishness is the root.  You know Hahnemann thought all diseases but a modification of one disease—­psora.  However it may be with his theory, the one moral disease is not an itching palm.  This is but a modification of selfishness, which is not merely cutaneous.

But the form it is supposed to take in the system of Yankees, is the above-named plebeian form.  The supposition may be correct.  Don’t we most feel our national troubles, the shock of the great national earthquake, when it causes an upheaval from the depths of the pocket?  If Uncle Sam’s sentiments are, as they are supposed to be, only a concentration of those of the majority, isn’t his lamentation over his run-away South, who has changed her name without his consent, that of Shylock:  ’My daughter!  Oh! my ducats!’?  Though not exactly connected with this branch of selfishness, I may as well, while speaking of our national difficulties, mention what struck me very forcibly:  It is said, that on the eminence from which the spectators of the Bull Run battle so precipitately fled, were found sandwiches and bottles of wine; and that these refreshments actually lined the road to Washington.  From this might be inferred that ‘to-day’s dinner’ not only ’subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday’s revolution,’ but that it also subtends a larger angle than to-day’s revolution.  If one could ever forget one’s own personal gratifications and comforts, it would be, I should think, in overlooking a nation’s battle-field—­our nation’s battle-field.  But it is not for a humble lay member, whose business it is to practice rather than preach, to criticise.  Are not the honorable members representatives of the people; and when they are cheered and refreshed, are