Permit me to return thanks through your mail, my boy, for a large feather fan recently consigned to my address by one of the admiring Women of America. It looks like a tail freshly plucked from a large-sized American eagle, and is decorated with a French-plate mirror in the centre and other French plates around the edges. The kind-hearted woman of America (who writes from Boston) says in her presentation note—"I admire to see a fan in the hands of the sterner sex; for it shows that the same hero-fist that grasps the sword has enough inherent gentleness to wave the cooling bauble. Such is life. The hand which falls like a hundred pounds of granite on the flinty eye of his ke-yuntery's foes has the softness of a blessing when it caresses the golden head of plastic childhood.

Yours, gushingly, Zephyrina Percy."

I find the "cooling bauble" very useful to brush the flies from my gothic steed Pegasus, my boy, and am a fanatic "to this extent, no more."

And here is what another young woman of America says to me in a note:

"My ma requests me to tell you that you ought to be ashamed of yourself, you hateful thing, for encouraging the vulgar people to be in favor of this nasty war, that is causing their superiors so much trouble, and has driven away the opera, and made enemies of those nice Southerners, with their beautiful big eyes and elegant swearing. Why don't you advocate a compromise, or a Habeas Corpus, or some other paper with names to it, and get Mr. Lincoln to stop the Constitution and order the war to be ended before there's any more assassinations and things? My pa was once a leather banker, and sold shoes for plantation servants, and made a great deal of money by it; but now he's a captain, or a surveyor, or some ridiculous thing, of the Home Guard, and may be massacred in cold blood the first time there's a battle in our neighborhood. My pa has to go to drill every night, and when he comes home in the morning he's so worn out with exhaustion that I've known him to lay right down in the hall and shed tears. My ma often says, that if Beauregard, or Palmerston, or any other foes should attack our house while pa is in that state, it would kill her dead. And I know it would make me so nervous that I should be a perfect fright for a week. My brother, Adolphus, has likewise joined the Home Guard, and has already had a bloody engagement with a Southerner named Tailor, who used to sell him clothes when the two sections were at peace. Adolphus says if it hadn't been for his double-quick, or some ridiculous

military thing or other, he would have been made a prisoner. It makes me sick to see how much lowness there is about Adolphus since he joined the ridiculous army; he calls his dinner 'rations,' and addresses me as 'Corporal Lollypop,' (the absurd thing!) and calls ma's crinoline a 'counter-scarp.'

"My pa says that he shall have to sell the carriage and the beautiful dog-cart if this hateful war don't end by the first of next month; and when I asked him yesterday if we couldn't have the gothic villa next to the Jones's at Newport this summer, he actually swore! The Joneses, you know, are very pleasant, sociable, vulgar sort of people, with a little money; and it would kill me to see them putting on airs over us because we didn't happen to take a cottage with bow-windows like them. My pa says that old Jones has got a contract to make clothes for the soldiers, and has made a great deal of money by manufacturing coats and other ridiculous things out of blue paper instead of cloth. Augustus Jones says if he don't meet me at Newport this summer he will enlist as soon as he comes back; and it would be just like the absurd creature to do it. I don't see why pa can't get out an indictment or something against the blockade, and call on the postmaster or some other ridiculous thing to send his new stock of plantation shoes to Alabama under a guard, and bring back the money. I don't see the use of living in a republic if one can't do that much. My ma says that you newspaper people could stop the dreadful war if you would only advocate compromises and things, and not be so ridiculous. Why can't you leave out some of those absurd advertisements, and

publish an article telling Mr. Lincoln that the war is ruining society? If it continues much longer, I shall have to wear my last year's bonnet a whole month, and I'd rather die. Do say something absurd, you ridiculous thing."

Have the war stopped right away, my boy,—have the war stopped right away.