Doubtless there are few men, who at all enjoy their own thoughts, or books, the printed thoughts of others, either of the past, or in the present, but have preserved in some form what impressed them favorably or interested them deeply. Some elaborate at night, after their hours of business are over, a daily record, or diary, in which are set down many of the "choice things" and all the "remarkable occurrences," to which the day may have given rise. Others—and they are not only wise but benevolent—do not selfishly shut up these things between the covers of a private manuscript-volume, but copy them off in a fair hand, and send them to the editor of some clever journal or magazine, where they are soon "known and read of all men"—and women. Now we have a collection of the kind to which we have alluded. When scribbled, they have been thrown into a drawer of the table whereon they were written. They are of all kinds and descriptions; of matters humorous and of matters pathetic: some have come warm from the heart—others come fresh from the fancy. Many things from the lips of others have been preserved, some of which drew tears from eyes unused to weep; while, on the other hand, and in respect of other things, the "water of mirth" has crept into the same eyes. Of such are the materials of our collection. There will be found in them no attempts at "fine writing;" for that is a thing as much beyond our inclination as our power. Simplicity, earnestness, a desire to put down plainly our own natural thoughts and meditations, and the brief, amusing, or instructive thoughts of others—these are the means and this the purpose of our "Editor's Drawer." Wherefore, reader, perpend the first "batch," and patiently await a second and a better.
How much there is in the power of a single felicitous word in poetry, toward making a perfect picture to the mind of the reader! It often invests an inanimate object with almost actual life, and makes the landscape a sentient thing. Here are a few lines that live in our memory—from Proctor, Barry Cornwall, if we do not mistake—which are eminently in illustration of this. The poet is sitting at night-fall upon a green meadow-bank, with his little daughter by his side, looking at the setting sun, and the twilight exhalations colored by its evening beams:
"——Here will we sit,
The while the sun goes down the glowing west,
And drink the balmy air
Exhaling from the meadows; the nectarous breath
Which Earth sends upward when her lord, the Sun,
Kisses her cheek at parting."
There is action as well as vitality in this beautiful simile. Shakspeare paints similarly, when he says:
"How soft the moonlight sleeps upon yon bank!"
Now, suppose he had written "rests upon yon bank?" how tame, in comparison, would the word have been; and yet it would be equally "correct." What is it that gives to the following line from Campbell's "Battle of Hohenlinden" its almost terrific force, but a single word:
"Far flashed the red artillery!"
That little word of one syllable sets the distant horizon all a-glow with the bursting flames from the deep-mouthed ordnance. Wherefore, ye minor bardlings, look to your accessories.