time I saw these gentlemen officiate was at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the sick and wounded soldiers and sailors.  Horace Greeley occupied one side of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the other.  There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs, but I have forgotten their names now.  Horace Greeley, gray-haired and beaming, was in sailor costume—­white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two gallant long ribbons.  Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously representing.  I shall never forget him.  Mr. Cooper was dressed as a general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike.  I neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston—­this was during the war of 1812.  At the grand national reception of Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to the left.  The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of the just now.  I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper, and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of French liberty, in 1848.  Then I never saw them any more until here lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down every time I see it announced that “Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;” and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic report that “Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform,” I say to myself, “Thank God, I was present.”  Thus I have been enabled to see these substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation, on “Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?” on veterinary matters, on all kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs.  Whenever somebody is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they will be on the platform