EDITOR’S TABLE.

FREAKS OF THE PEN.

“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”

My dear Jeremy,—I write you while a hail-storm is rattling at the window-panes, as if anxious to get in and warm its nose, and while the fire in my Radiator is roaring as angrily as a young lion, as if anxious to get out and have a battle with the storm. The clouds without, too, have a warlike aspect, look blue, and go tumbling about as if they had taken whisky-toddy not over warm. Nature, after the sulks, is hysterical. The wind goes moaning and howling around the house, as if anxious to vent its temper in a blow at somebody. The solitary oysterman in the street, is raising a cry as dolorous as if he had taken a breeze—been on a gale—on his own account, was melancholy, and had not the heart to sing-“away;” yet in fact he keeps singing away, in tones rather inviting to blue-devils. He does not feel, evidently, as well as his oysters, though he is their master. The vanity of riches is thus made apparent,—wealth does not always produce happiness. Patient industry in the storm is dismal—so another apophthegm is exploded. Knowledge is not the grand specific either. Their ignorance of the roasting which awaits them, is bliss. His knowledge of the roasting which awaits him—if he goes home without market-money—is, perhaps, the particular misery which weighs upon his soul, and renders his cry so plaintive.

The philosophers say that contentment is happiness—but who is contented? The very discoverers of this sovereign balm for restless spirits, go toiling on over musty tomes in search of something new, and grow fretful and peevish from indigestion, or irritable from age and failing eyesight. Nature herself is not always calm and smiling. She has her storms, her earthquakes, and her eruptions. The earth is not satisfied with her own dull face, but must borrow her brightness and beauty from the sun, she gets the dumps, and grows cold, if the loan is reluctantly given. What, then, can she expect from her children, but a thirst insatiate for change and glory of some sort? Philosophy is all very well in its way, and so is the philosopher’s stone—but who is the happy possessor of either? People talk of the insensibility of the oyster—perhaps that is the great secret; but try him upon a hot stove, if you wish to witness the open-mouthed, but mute, appeal of despairing distress; try him upon your palate afterward, if you wish to paliate conscience for his sufferings—but do not slander the fine feelings of so good a fellow for the sake of an apophthegm. He is more worthy of your regards than many men who put him to the torture on silver dishes.